


The Halls of Waiting

by khazadqueen (ama)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dreams, F/F, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Romance, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/khazadqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death puts an end to many things. Fili can no longer look forward to becoming king, getting married, having children, or proving himself worthy of his line—but he can still fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was meant to be a one-scene, 500-word drabble. It is now longer that. A huge, enormous thank you to rainuponthemoon for looking over this fic, making suggestions, and badgering me into finishing it in the first place. I also want to acknowledge determanfidd, whose fic Sansukh is probably THE afterlife fic in the fandom; I haven’t consciously borrowed anything from her verse, and in a few cases I’ve consciously chosen to do something differently, but it’s very possible some things slipped in. On a similar note, I wrote Ori with a panic disorder because it fit and then, belatedly, realized that the idea came from Lapin’s excellent Fili/Ori fic “Starry-Eyed,” so credit there as well.
> 
> A few (brief) notes on concrete stuff: hopefully it’s clear when reading this fic that Fili would describe himself as a trans man if he were living in our world (dwarves don’t and have never based gender on genitals, so he wouldn’t use those words in his world). Also his and Kili's second mother, Bala, is a trans female dwarf originally from my fic "This Feeling That Remains." All Khuzdul is translated at the end of the fic. Finally, I’ve altered Tolkien’s notes on dwarven love lives a bit. He talks about dwarves take one spouse, and make only one choice for spouse. The same is true of my fic, although I added the existence of literal, mythical soulmates. While the ideal in dwarven society is to marry your soulmate, not everyone realizes who that is while they’re alive, so some are capable of falling in love with other people and marrying them, if they never find their soulmate. So someone’s Choice might be different than their Destined One, in a sense.

For the first time, he wakes to the sound of his name.

He likes the name gifted to him by his mothers. It’s a good name, and he responds to it willingly enough, but every time someone calls _Fíli_ it takes him a moment to recognize it as his own. It is not his name. It is not the one given to him by his Maker, carved into his heart. Now, for the first time he can remember, he is woken instantly by the sound of a soft voice whispering _Zarinruzud_ in his ear. His eyes flicker open, and then he snaps them shut and draws in a sharp breath. Because he is dead. He knows he is dead. He can still feel the orc blade in his back, though it is duller than he would have expected. He is dead and in the halls of his forefathers, and before he can open his eyes, he needs a moment to weep.

“Li, will you go and get grandfather?” a voice says by his side. “Fíli is awake.”

“Aye,” another voice responds, and he hears the scrape of chair legs against the floor. “It will be hard on the poor lad, having no one he knows awake. Be gentle with him.”

“I will.” There was a moment’s pause and he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Fíli?”

He shakes his head and turns closer to his pillow. He has a pillow. He’s on a bed. The mattress is hard and beneath it he can feel stone. He’s low to the ground—that’s good. Around him he can hear faint snores, slow breathing, talking, weeping, laughing. From the echoes he can tell that he’s an enormous room with stone walls, and he wonders how many other dead lay around him. He sniffles and hears a sigh.

“I know, lad. It’s never easy, not for any of us. But come on, now. Open your eyes and we’ll have a nice chat. Your grandparents are here, you know. And your great-grandparents, and all your great-uncles and aunts. I know you’ve heard the stories of them, eh? They’d like to meet you.”

Fíli opens his eyes.

“You’re my uncle, aren’t you?” he asks hoarsely, and Frerin smiles.

“Not hard a guess, is it?”

“No,” Fíli snorts, because his uncle looks so much like Thorin and Dís that it’s almost ridiculous. He was younger when he died, so he has a sparse beard and no grey in his hair, but the nose, the jaw, the dark hair are all alike. Frerin has green eyes, he sees, and he’s surprised. The Longbeard line of his family has blue, the Broadbeam has brown, and he’s always wondered where his green eyes came from. He supposes he’ll learn soon enough. “Where’s the rest of them? No shortage of dead Durins here, are there?”

“Thought we’d give you a minute of peace. It can be overwhelming. One minute you’re fighting for your life, the next you wake up, dead, and a bunch of relatives you never met are fawning over you saying ‘oh you’re the spitting image of your great-grandfather’s aunt’s cousin twice removed.’ You’re taking it rather well, though.”

“Right,” Fíli says.

He sniffles again and wipes at his eyes and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t _feel_ dead. he can still breathe and cry, and he rubs the heel of his hands against his closed eyes and sees spots appear. It feels more like a dream, like he’s been knocked out in battle and is having a dream about his uncle who died in a similar way—an uncle who looks too much like his siblings because Fíli actually doesn’t know what he looks like. Or maybe the battle was the dream, and this is the truth. In any case, he feels bizarrely calm, and annoyed at himself from crying.

“Did you hear your name?” Frerin asks conversationally.

“Yes.”

“Scared me witless, that did. I was a secretive little bugger in life—I never told _anyone_ , so hearing it was a bit of a shock. You’re welcome to go by it, incidentally. Here it doesn’t matter so much, keeping it secret. There aren’t any elves or men to listen in, and any dwarves who seek to cause trouble—well, people are more open here. Some keep their given names because it makes it easier around family, but others prefer their true name.”

He thinks about it for a moment. His own name fits, of course, fits better than any other ever could, but all in all Fíli really likes his name. It was a _gift._ A gift from his mothers, one that ties him to both of their families, to his brother...

“Kíli,” he blurts out suddenly. He sits up like a catapult and Frerin withdraws his hand from his shoulder. “Thorin—Dwalin, all the rest, how are they? Can you see somehow? How did the battle go—did they get away? There was a whole other army on the way, I tried to warn them but I couldn’t tell if they got it or not. They’re—” Fear seizes his heart as Frerin looks away. “They’re not here, are they?”

“I’m not sure how it’s gone,” Frerin says quietly. “It’s hard to keep an eye on things when so many are arriving in the halls. People want to be here to greet their family, and watching a battle is always difficult because—”

“ _Are they here_?” Fíli demands.

“Kíli and Thorin are. Yes. The rest of the company, as far as I know, is still fighting.”

He sinks back onto the bed and stares at the ceiling.

“It was for nothing, then.”

“I wouldn’t say—”

“That was the last thing I ever did. Tried to get them to run away. It didn’t even _matter_.”

Frerin sits closer and puts a hand over his. He speaks in a quiet, understanding voice.

“Fíli, listen to me: do not attempt to make sense of death. It cannot be done. I died for Moria, and I thought it was for nothing—others have died because they tripped over a step, or because they tried to stop a friend from drowning, and ended up drowning the both of them. There is no sense to be made of any of it, and the more you dwell on it, the less chance you have of seeking the peace that is the right of every dwarf to enter these halls. I know I can’t stop it entirely, but I want you to know now, so you don’t torment yourself as I did.”

Fíli looks at his uncle, who looks wiser than anyone his age probably should, and nods, because he can feel the storm building in the back of his mind and he wants to delay it a while. He _wants_ to meet his uncle and all the relatives he’s heard so much about. He is distantly aware of the fact that he was at the brink of everything he ever wanted—Erebor, seat of his ancestors, his inheritance—and it is easier, so much easier, to pretend that he hasn’t lost it all.

But even so, he knows that he must be with Kíli and Thorin.

“Can I see them?”

Before Frerin can respond, four dwarves approach Fíli’s bed. Fíli sits up and suddenly feels very, very small, because before him stands his great-grandfather, Thror, son of Dain son of Nain, King Under the Mountain. Thror’s beard is long and grey and threaded with little plates like armor, and he wears no crown—not here—but kingliness lies upon his shoulders like a familiar cloak. Fíli, for a moment, is frozen stiff and silent, but then Thror’s face crinkles in a benevolent smile. A grandfatherly smile, Fíli thinks, although he has never truly known what that would look like, until now.

“There he is,” he says in a rumbling voice. “Oh, Lhis, I see it now, you’re right. Spitting image of Borin, he is, except for his mother’s coloring.”

“Told you,” Frerin mutters, and Fíli bites his lip.

“Welcome, my great-grandson, to the Halls of Mandos.”

Fíli silently bows his head and murmurs a greeting, and is suddenly aware that he is unclothed. He had not minded before, but now he is in the company of a king. He avoids the gaze of the three dwarves who stood beside Thror—he can guess, by the tattoos and the missing eye, that one was his grandfather Thrain, but the other two are unknown to him—and looks at Frerin.

“Is there somewhere I could get clothes?” he asks. “And see Kíli and Thorin?”

“Yes, I made you some,” Frerin replies, and he ruffles in the bag at his side. “Do you mind skirts? I know you lot tended not to wear them in Ered Luin, but we usually do. They’re comfortable when you don’t have to be running around or anything.”

“Fine,” Fíli says with a nod. “Thank you.”

“Oh, bother, I forgot—Fíli, this is my one, Lilah,” Frerin says, gesturing to one of the dwarves by Thror, and she smiles and goes to his side. She is a head taller than her husband, with the darkest skin Fíli has ever seen and a delicate network of scars along the left side of her face. He wonders if those are from her death—does death cause scars?—or if she had been a habitual warrior in life. “Call her Li, everyone does. And this is my father Thrain, and my grandmother, Lhis.”

“At your service,” Fíli says as he gets dressed.

The clothes are comfortable as he could imagine, made from a smooth, cool blue fabric with plush fur lining, with embroidery in gold. It’s fine, very fine, and that feels strange. These are the kind of clothes that would easily get ruined in the Blue Mountains, where the dwarves are constantly traipsing outside and through mud and in uneven mine tunnels—the skirt is even stranger. It’s comfortable, but he can’t help but fret about it getting torn or getting in its way. Not that it matters, he thinks wryly. Does one really need clothes in the afterlife, all things considered?

“Where’s amad?” he hears Frerin ask Thrain.

“With Thorin,” he replies. “She won’t leave him.”

“He hasn’t woken yet, surely?”

“No, not yet. Neither of them have.”

“Where are they?” Fíli asks, his heart pounding. He still has a pulse, he notices in the back of his mind.

“Down here, lad,” Thror says solemnly, and he leads him down the row of beds.

Fíli looks around him for the first time. He’s in an enormous hall—he can’t see two of the walls, and can barely see the ceiling, but it looks like a rough-hewn cave. It is brightly lit, although he cannot see a source, and crowded with stone beds placed low to the ground. On each bed is a dwarf, and beside each is a small crowd of ancestors. Some of the dead dwarves are old and frail—presumably members of the seven clans who are dying at home in their beds, surrounded by family members, and waking up just the same way. Others, perhaps most of them, are dwarves who have fallen in the battle for Erebor. Fíli averts his gaze and feels sick to his stomach.

Then Thror slows, and Fíli is standing at the head of two beds with familiar figures lying upon them. They must have died soon after each other, he thinks, and his throat closes. There is a female dwarf sitting by Thorin’s bedside, and Thror greets her and is about to introduce Fíli when Fíli sees his brother’s eyes flicker open.

“Kíli,” he says as he falls to his knees. “Kíli, you’re all right. You’re all right.”

It’s a habit, more than anything, because Kíli is _not_ all right, Kíli is dead and he was supposed to live. Fíli was supposed to keep him alive. But Fíli is an older brother, and a good one, so he wraps an arm around Kíli’s shoulders and holds him close and tells him that everything’s all right.

“Hello, na,” Kíli says with a smile. It’s a weak smile, and Fíli squeezes him tighter. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“You’re an idiot.” Fíli shakes his head and lets out a puff of laughter, although his voice wavers. “You were supposed to run, wool-for-brains.”

“Not my style,” Kíli says breezily. His eyes flicker up to Fíli’s face, and then he glanced away with a slight shudder.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I mean—everything. I saw you die, Fíli. No, no I didn’t see it, I just saw you—your body. And now we’re both… why did I let you go on alone?”

“Because I told you to, and you listened for once in your life,” Fíli says, trying to keep his voice light as he rubs Kíli’s back. “It’s all right, Kíli. No one would ever blame you.”

At the same time he feels a sharp ache in his heart, because Fíli blames himself. How can he do otherwise? He is dead and his little brother is dead too, and he could have stopped it. He isn’t sure how, but his entire being revolts against the fact that they are both here. That he has failed so spectacularly. His grip on Kíli’s shoulders tightens as he tries to bat those feelings away. There’s no place for them now—he can’t focus on anything except taking care of his brother.

But still, he can’t help himself from asking what happened.

“Tauriel needed my help,” Kíli says in a quiet voice. Fíli’s immediate reaction is that that doesn’t sound good enough, but he bites it back and nods. “She’s not going to be happy with me, is she?”

“No,” Fíli says hoarsely. “Nor will Dwalin. Maker, I wish he hadn’t seen…”

“I know,” Kíli winces. Then he pauses. “And—and Thorin?”

Fíli is silent. He looks over at the other bed, and hears Kíli curse.

“Fíli… what about amad? One would have been bad enough, but all three of us…?”

“Mum’ll look after her just fine,” Fíli says, hoping against hope that it’s true. “They’ll look after each other. They’ll be all right. Everything’s all right.”

\---

It takes Thorin a long, long time to wake up. No one knows why some wake quicker than others, Frerin tells them, although some have their theories. Thorin weeps when he sees his mother, his father, his brother—but Fíli is astounded by the change in his uncle. Here, in the Halls, he realizes for the first time how much weighed on Thorin when he lived. Sickness and fear and self-loathing. These things do not go away with death, but their burden is lighter, especially when he has a chance to speak to Thror and the rest of his family. Then Thorin turns and sees Fíli and Kíli, and silently begins to weep again.

He puts one hand on Fíli’s shoulder and the other on his cheek and asks for forgiveness, his eyes bright with tears, and Fíli remembers a time when he was a child, when he thought Thorin was invincible and flawless, when he wanted nothing better than for Thorin to be proud of him. He has let that feeling slip away, but he remembers it, and he swallows thickly and nods and hugs Thorin tight to him.

Uthran is Thorin’s true name, and he asks people to use it. Sometimes Fíli’s tongue stumbles over it, but he tries. He tells people his name—his brother and Thorin already knew—but on the whole, he prefers to go by Fíli.

More relatives come and find them, some so distant that Fíli has never even heard stories of. He and Kíli meet Bala’s parents, for the first time, and his grandmother hugs him so tightly that he wonders if he still has ribs to break. But Frerin is right—it is overwhelming, and after a while, he and Kíli and Thorin are whisked away to a small room with Frerin and Li. It is their sitting room, they tell them, and in their pantry is a seemingly endless supply of wine and seed cake. And so, soon after he has died, Fíli finds himself having cake with his uncles and his brother and his uncle’s wife and learning about death.

It’s surprisingly like life, Frerin tells them cheerfully. There is food and drink, and supplies with which to craft, and clothes and beds and houses. There are even gardens, although no one is quite sure where they end. Time passes, albeit strangely. Nobody ages or gets ill, but other than that they do all the things they can in life. Sleep, write books, talk, stub their toes, argue, improve their craft, get drunk.

“And get married, apparently,” Thorin murmurs, with the small, rare grin that indicates he is making a joke. Frerin turns pink, and Li gives a rich laugh and takes his hand.

“It’s easier here than there,” she says. “Confusion is more easily swept away. Some dwarves can perceive that someone is their makhabbûn when they live, but others can only guess. When I died, learning Frerin’s name was as easy as knowing my own. I just closed my eyes and reached for it and—there it was. Go ahead, you all should try. Not everyone has a one, of course, but it’s nice to check and make sure.”

“I don’t have to,” Thorin says immediately, sipping his wine. “It’s Dwalin. I’ve always known that.”

Frerin makes a disgusted sound and Thorin kicks him swiftly in the ankle.

“Ow, what was that for? It’s true, isn’t it, that the two of you are horribly sappy? I’ve seen enough to—”

“Tauriel!” Kíli interrupts delighted. “I knew it. I knew it felt—more. More than it should.” Then his smile falls, and he frowns at the floor. “I wish we’d had time to...”

“Tauriel?” Li says, raising her eyebrows. Three golden rings shine in the lamplight. “That’s not a dwarf name.”

Frerin is suddenly very interested in the pattern on the ceiling, while Thorin looks dumbstruck. Kíli fidgets.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says to Thorin. “I can’t help it if she’s my one, can I? And whatever Thranduil’s done, Tauriel saved my life, more than once.”

“An _elf_?” Thorin says, thunderstruck. “How—when did this happen? It’s unheard of—”

“Well,” Frerin interrupts, and cringes when his brother looks at him. “I’m just saying, it’s not exactly unheard of, brother, especially here... the elves and men are in separate halls, but with permission of Mahal and the other Valar, we can visit, and they wouldn’t be the first—”

“Tauriel’s not going to die, though,” Kíli says in a firm voice. “She’s going to have a good long life, I promise you that.”

“ _When_?” Thorin repeats. “When did this—”

“When you left me in Laketown, of course, when—”

“You’re not going to be bitter about that for all eternity, are you? Clearly you weren’t fit to—”

“We’re not talking about that right now, we’re talking about Tauriel.”

“I don’t see the point in doing that if she’s not—”

“Because I don’t want you to be giving me that _look_ , Thorin! Sooner or later you’ll have to accept that Fíli and I aren’t children anymore, and you can’t look at us like we need scolding whenever we make an important decision that you don’t understand. So let’s talk about Tauriel, shall we—”

“Fíli?” Frerin says suddenly. “Fíli, are you all right?”

Kíli and Thorin look around and Fíli realizes that he has been staring into the distance for nearly a full minute in mute shock, and his wine glass is tilting dangerously in his hand. He rights it and sets in on the table before him, shaking himself back to earth.

“Yes, I’m—I’m fine. I...”

“It can be a bit of a surprise for some, hm?” Li says kindly.

“Fíli?” Kíli asks quietly, anxiety in his voice. He can read the confusion on his brother’s face, and he sees more than surprise there.

“I’m fine,” Fíli repeats. “It’s all right.”

“Did you see someone, then?”

Fíli nods again, but he can’t quite bring himself to say it yet because it seems—so _unlikely_. He can’t doubt it, not when he feels it as deeply as he feels his own name, but he can’t believe it just yet either. He opens his mouth and then shakes his head because it doesn’t make sense. Thorin always knew who his one was, Kíli wasn’t at all surprised. Makhabbân —dwarves forged together by the great maker, _made_ to keep each other strong and happy—were supposed to make sense. Then Kíli digs an elbow into his side impatiently, probably thinking that Fíli is just trying to build suspense, and he decides immediately that he needs help processing this and blurts out, “It’s Ori.”

“Ori?” Kíli repeats dumbly. “Our Ori?”

His heart objects to the plural, but Fíli just says, “Yeah. It doesn’t make _sense_.”

“Love doesn’t,” Li says with a bit of a grin, and the tips of his ears turn red.

“No, you don’t understand—we live in the smallest dwarven settlement in Middle Earth. I’ve known Ori for years and years. I’ve never really thought about him much, honestly, and if he were really my one, I would _know_ , wouldn’t I? How could I have not known?”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it either,” Kíli muses. He takes a gulp of wine and then makes a face, as though he wants to laugh and isn’t quite suppressing it. “ _Ori_ , really? He’s a bit…” He waves his hand noncommittally. “Don’t you think?”

“Shut up, Kíli,” Thorin says crisply, and he bends his head a little closer to Fíli’s. “You look upset. Does that bother you?”

Fíli hesitates.

“Do you think he—knew?” he asks, because it feels foolish and arrogant to say _loves me_.

Thorin’s eyes search his for a moment, and then he drops his gaze and shrugs.

“I’m not sure. He did seem to look after you and Kíli a lot these last few months, but that would only be natural. He might have.”

“And I’m dead.” He finishes his wine and lets out a bitter laugh. “I’m dead and Mum and Amad are probably going to be miserable and Ori might be in love with me and for all we know Erebor could be lost right now and there’s no way to find any of this out because I’m dead. _Wonderful_.”

There is tension in his voice and he sees Frerin and Li exchange a glance. This is probably common, he thinks. A stage of death they’ve seen many dwarves go through. He’s not surprised, just vaguely embarrassed, because who would have guessed that out of the three of them, _Fíli_ would be taking his own death the hardest, while Kíli and Thorin are handling it with remarkable composure? It’s embarrassing, and his fingers crumble a small piece of seed cake into tiny pieces as he tries to calm himself down. Frerin clears his throat.

“There’s a way to see them, you know.”

And so he takes them down. Down, down into the twisting tunnels that run deep beneath the halls of Mandos, and Fíli feels smaller the farther they go. These are not mine shafts—they are accompanied by none of the familiar clinking and conversation of miners. They feel more like the empty tunnels used by dwarven mystics, and he can’t help but think of himself as a child nosing into things he’s too young for when he considers the prospect of descending into the earth to imitate their purpose. Pretty much all of the dead dwarves do this at some point, Frerin assures him. It’s simple. All you have to do is find a little cave of your own, and sit and close your eyes and think of the living you want to visit. Open your eyes and you’re there. You can’t speak to them, he says. Can’t quite touch them. But you can watch and listen, and sometimes they know you are with them. It’s the best one can hope for.

“We should visit Mum and Amad,” Kíli suggests.

A wave of homesickness sweeps over Fíli suddenly. He misses his mothers. He misses the Blue Mountains. He misses his house, Thorin’s forge, the woods, the comfortable cramped village…. The thought of returning there, to a place that hasn’t seen war in centuries, is immensely comforting, but then his stomach drops. They won’t have heard yet. It takes even ravens weeks to traverse that kind of distance, and there is no way such time could have passed. So Dis and Bala are going about their days, content and cheerful, not knowing that both of their children are dead. It is a fate so horrible that most dwarves could never even allow word of it to pass their lips. Fíli would have to visit his mothers, hear their voices for the first time in months, perhaps hear them wonder aloud when he will be home, knowing the entire time that he will never really be home again.

“I don’t think I can,” he admits. Kíli meets his gaze and nods in understanding.

“When you’re ready, then,” Kíli says. “I’m going for a little bit, and then I want to see Tauriel. Ori and Dwalin?”

“Yeah,” Fíli says, swallowing, and Thorin nods

They wish each other luck, and each enter their own little cave. Fíli’s is small, small enough that he can lean onto the wall at his right, or shift his weight just slightly and lean on the wall at his left. He goes all the way to the back and sits down, feeling safe and comfortable. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The stone at his back is sure. He listens to the soft echo of his breathing against the rock and relaxes….

And then the air changes. With a start, Fíli jerks back to himself and opens his eyes, and is in Erebor. One of the royal chambers, he thinks—a large, open sitting room with couches and a table and halls leading to other rooms, and only a minimal amount of rubble. All of the dwarves of the company are here, he realizes, though they all look a bit lost, as though they have gathered here by accident and simply don’t want to leave. Gloin and Óin are sitting by a low-burning fire, signing in Iglishmek so as not to disturb the others, while Nori just sits and smokes, staring at the flames. Bofur, Fíli sees with a startled jolt, has lost a foot in the battle. His leg is bandaged neatly and he has the dazed look of someone who has been drugged just enough to dull the pain without knocking him out, but Fíli can’t help but think that he should probably be in a hospital. Bombur is sitting in an armchair by his brother’s couch, and from the look on his face, he agrees with Fíli, but Bifur sits close by and holds his cousin’s hand to soothe him.

Dwalin is pacing. Fíli can hear the rhythmic clunk of his boots, and when he turns his head he sees Dwalin reach the entrance to the sitting room, then turn around and slowly walk down the short hallway to a study. Thorin is walking with him, keeping pace almost perfectly. Their heights, their silhouettes, the lengths of their strides are almost exactly the same, and although he knows Dwalin doesn’t realize what’s happening, Fíli has an overwhelming sense of rightness about the scene, and he turns away to give them their privacy.

And then there is Ori, Balin, and Dori. All three are sitting on the same couch. Balin weeps, and Fíli’s heart constricts at the sight. He’s seen Balin cry before, but he’s never been the source of his misery—and in any case, it never gets any less painful. Dori, unsurprisingly, copes with his own grief by caring for others’. He pats Balin on the shoulder, offers him handkerchiefs, and says “there, there,” in a soft, comforting voice. It’s just the way to comfort a dwarf like Balin, and Fíli, who hasn’t spoken to Dori more than maybe fifteen times in his life, is fervently grateful to him. Ori is not crying, although from his eyes, Fíli can tell that he has been recently. He has pulled his feet up on the couch cushions and is leaning against his brother’s shoulder, staring blankly out into the room. Fíli, who is standing more or less in the center of the room, has the uncomfortable feeling that Ori is staring straight through him, so he moves. He hesitates for a moment and then walks towards Ori and sits on the arm of the sofa.

“Hello, Ori,” he says quietly.

There is no response. Fíli sits for five or ten minutes, listening to Dwalin pace and Balin weep and Bifur hum an old dwarvish lullaby to his cousins, before Ori speaks in a muted voice.

“Has someone sent a raven to the princess?”

“I did,” Balin says with a hiccup, wiping his eyes. “So did Dain.”

“Will there be two funerals, you think?” he asks idly.

“Ori,” Dori chastises, and Ori shrugs.

“I thought she—and the rest of the folks from the Blue Mountains—might want a chance to say goodbye.”

His voice wavers on the last word and Fíli’s whole body trembles with the same feeling he had when he first realized Ori was his own—a fierce, unwavering protectiveness, the knowledge that he can make Ori happy, that it is his duty to keep him safe, his right to share in his burdens and his joys. The strength of this knowledge takes his breath away. He wants Ori to turn and hug him, but instead Fíli leans down and presses a fumbling kiss to his temple. It’s like kissing a portrait, or a statue—he can feel the softness of Ori’s skin, but no warmth of life, and Ori does not look around.

“I’m here,” Fíli says. “Right here. You don’t have to say goodbye just yet.”

Ori doesn’t acknowledge him; not so much as a flicker of his gaze indicates that he has heard. Fíli didn’t expect him to, really, but he also didn’t expect how much it would hurt.

No one else speaks, so Fíli simply sits and looks around at the other dwarves. They’re all in mourning, he can tell, and most have been crying, and shame washes over him. He remembers what Frerin told him when he first woke up, that he ought not try to make sense of death, but he can’t help but think _it was a trap, of course it was, and if I had noticed sooner, none of them would be suffering like this_. They’re his friends, all of them. Gloin, who used to tell him and Kíli the most marvelous stories when they were children; Óin, who had patiently nursed him for two weeks when he had caught pneumonia so bad they feared he might die; Bombur, who chuckled and waved in half-hearted embarrassment every time his children hung out of their windows to wave at the passing princes; Bifur, who had noticed whenever anyone on the company was having a bad day, and sat with them and offered a hug or a present to cheer them up; Bofur, who had spent a month of their journey trying to teach Fíli the flute; Nori, with whom he had been trading knives and rude jokes all autumn; Dori, who looks after every young dwarf in his immediate vicinity without even thinking about it; and Dwalin and Balin, who are parents in all but name. And Ori, who draws in his sketchbook constantly but only rarely lets Fíli see because the others just aren’t ready, and can take out an orc’s eye with a slingshot, and braids lavender ribbons in his hair, and is Fíli’s one.

He would have spared them this pain, if he could.

After quite some time, the main door opens and Bilbo comes in. He smiles feebly at the dwarves, apologizing for being absent. He looks like he has been crying for days, so unlike the carefree, confused hobbit who answered the door in Bag End, and Fíli thinks back to something Thorin said when he first woke up: _I wasn’t alone. Bilbo was with me_.

He can’t take it anymore.

“I’ll be back, Ori,” he says when he stands. “I promise.” He turns to the room and says, in a shaking voice, “All of you—I’ll come see you. You’re good dwarves. And a good hobbit.”

He walks down the hall to the study to tell Thorin he’s leaving, and only belatedly realizes that the pacing has stopped. He finds Dwalin sitting in a desk chair, his head in his hands and Thorin kneeling by his side. The old warrior heaves a ragged sigh and turns his head, and both Thorin and Fíli freeze, because more than likely Dwalin is just staring into the distance—but he could, possibly, be staring right at Thorin’s face.

“Uthran…” he murmurs.

Thorin reaches up to touch Dwalin’s face and whispers a word in Khuzdul that Fíli does not—will not—listen to. Dwalin closes his eyes and looks older than he ever has, and Thorin drops his hand.

“Are you going back?” he asks in a rough voice.

“Yes,” Fíli says. “If you want to stay…”

“No, I will come. He only needs time.”

Thorin stands and kiss Dwalin’s forehead. Then he puts a hand on Fíli’s shoulder, and together they talk through the sitting room—Bilbo is sitting on a stool near Bofur’s couch, and the dwarf has managed to make him smile a little more genuinely—and out into the hallway, where there is no one to distract them. Thorin keeps his hand on Fíli’s shoulder, and for that he is grateful. They close their eyes. In the span of a breath, Fíli is back in his little cave, and he leans his head against the wall and looks up at the rough, dark ceiling.

Eventually he leaves and finds Thorin waiting outside.

“Kíli still gone?”

“Yes.”

They wait—he doesn’t know for how long. Finally Kíli stumbles from his cave, looking tired but happy.

“She knew I was there,” he says, wiping at a tear with the back of his hand. “She couldn’t see me or hear me, really, but she knew I was there, and I think she got the gist of what I wanted to say. How’d it go for you both?”

“I think… Dwalin might have felt my presence. At the end.”

Thorin glances at Fíli, who nods.

“Yes, I think he did.”

“And Ori?” Kíli asks. Fíli shakes his head.

“He didn’t. Frerin said he probably wouldn’t.”

“Right. I’m sorry, Fíli,” Kíli says, reaching out to squeeze Fíli’s forearm. Fíli tousles his hair fondly.

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter—I’m dead, aren’t I? Even if he knew I was there, what was I going to do about it?”

Kíli isn’t fooled, of course he isn’t, but he smiles and puts his arm around Fíli’s shoulders bracingly.

“Right. Now come on—Frerin said we can sleep when we’re dead, can’t we? I think all three of us could use a bit of sleep.”

\---

So they get used to death. Fíli finds that he actually doesn’t mind it as much as he thought he would. If death lacks the adventure of life, it also lacks some of the stress, and it is the first time he has ever been able to occupy himself with whatever he likes without worrying about money or his duties as a prince. He asks Thorin teach him how to smith, properly, and begins to hone his cooking abilities from survival skill to pleasurable hobby. By far his favorite thing to do, though, is play music. He doesn’t think of it at first, but one day Thorin asks Frerin if he can find a harp or if he’ll have to ask someone to make him one—Frerin says he’ll be sure to find one in one of the many endless storage rooms that contain anything from candle wax to uncut diamonds to four-poster beds—and Fíli immediately joins his uncle in his search, and finds himself a fiddle.

Dwarves love music. Most of their histories are songs, rather than books, because music is something they can always carry with them, and for years Fíli had felt left out because his voice wasn’t as good as the rest of his family’s. Then Dís had had the brilliant idea to have Dwalin teach him and Kíli the fiddle. It was rather gratifying to Fíli that Kíli didn’t pick it up quite as easily as he had, but still they learned together, and they had spent many nights in the corner of a tavern, earning free beers and some good conversation for their playing. And so they do the same thing in death. The acoustics in many of the large dining halls are excellent, and on many nights they are joined by a whole host of other dwarves, either to listen or to play and sing along. It makes him feel almost at home. Fíli is especially happy to see all four of their grandparents join in the singing one night; they’ve always been friendly, of course, but he gets the sense that Bala’s parents—a leatherworker and a miner from the Iron Hills—are a bit intimidated still at being connected to royalty. He thinks his mothers would be happy to see them all like this.

Kíli’s new favorite pastime, on the other hand, is learning about plants. Thorin, though he is _very slowly_ coming around to the fact that Kíli’s one is an elf, rolls his eyes, but Kíli is not discouraged. He finds a book and spends hours in the gardens and the forest, trying to identify certain species, and Fíli, being a good brother, helps him study.

“Kíli, I don’t think this will impress Tauriel as much as you think it will.”

“I’m not trying to impress her. I’m just trying to develop shared interests.”

“Yeah, and from what I’ve heard I think she’d be more interested in archery and music than trees. Elves can’t _all_ spend all their time gardening, can they?”

“Maybe not, but just because she’s not too interested for an elf doesn’t mean she’s not interested at all. The average dwarf’s interest in plants stops at ‘can I eat this or not,’ whereas the average elf knows a lot about the different kinds of trees and flowers and everything. They even give each other flowers as presents, quite often. I don’t remember what this leaf is—it’s poisonous, isn’t it?”

“Try eating it,” Fíli says with a grin, and dodges as Kíli tries to hit him.

Still, throughout all of this, he can’t help but spend a large amount of his time thinking about the living. He visits them often, and not alone. Most of his family comes down into the caves with him for the funeral.

It is a week, or perhaps two, after they die, long enough for Erebor to be made safe for the crowd of attendees. They stand in Erebor and watch Dain and Gandalf make a speech, and an uzrak say the final blessings over their bodies. The halls echo with the sound of mourning, and at one point Ori can’t stand it anymore and breaks away from where the company stands at the front of the crowd. Fíli follows him; so does Óin, although Nori stops Dori. Óin follows Ori at a close distance to a small, empty corridor, and Ori presses his back against a wall and sits down, panting heavily and curled in on himself. Fíli and Óin both kneel beside him, and Fíli knows he can’t do anything to help but he’s terrified, Ori doesn’t look well—

“It’s all right, lad,” Óin says, and it sounds so familiar that Fíli almost stops worrying. “You’ll get through this just fine. Always have, haven’t you? Come on, we’re going to take some nice deep breaths and then we’ll go have a cup of tea. Breathe in now. And breathe out.”

They stay like this for ten minutes or more, and Fíli realizes this isn’t a new thing for either of them. He never knew. He sits beside Ori and rests a hand on his knee. Óin kneels before Ori, a few feet of space between them, and patiently guides him through it. _Thank you, cousin_ , Fíli thinks fervently.

“I’m sorry,” Ori says when it’s over.

“No need for it.”

“You’re missing the funeral.”

“I’ve seen enough of ’em. Has this been happening more lately?”

“Not since we were in the goblin tunnels,” Ori sniffs, and Fíli thinks _how could I not have noticed_? “But I’ve been waiting for it. The crowd is what sets it off, but I knew it was coming because the problem is feeling so—helpless. No one wants us to do any of the physical work because we’re supposed to be heroes, but the rest of it is stuff only Mister Balin or Dwalin or Gloin can do, and they’re _grieving_. We should be helping them, not sitting around doing nothing. But I can’t—I can’t help just sitting around and missing them and feeling miserable for myself even though I’ve no right to.”

“Everyone’s got a right to grieve, lad,” Óin says gravely.

“Why should I get to go and make a fool of myself, running out of a funeral, when Dwalin doesn’t?” Ori asks, his arms drawing his knees even more tightly against his chest. “Or Balin? They knew them best.”

“They grieve in their own way, and you in yours. There’s no shame to it. You miss your king and your friends—nothing is more natural.”

Ori nods and leans forward, pressing his forehead to his knees.

“You’re not a fool, Ori,” Fíli says, even though he knows it cannot help, and after a second’s hesitation he reaches up and rests his hand on the back of Ori’s head. “You’re brilliant, you really are. And of course you’d miss your one, wouldn’t you? Even if you don’t know it.”

“You know what the worst bit is?” Ori says with a sigh as he sits up again. “Sometimes I forget they’re dead. It doesn’t _feel_ like they are. It’s like they’re still here, close enough to touch, and everything’s right again… and then I have to remember, and start the whole thing over again. Have you ever felt like that?”

“Aye. Most people do. It’s part of the process, and once you get to a point where you can accept their deaths, you can move on so it doesn’t hurt so much to remember them. Peace. That’s the end goal, and that’s what you’re going to reach someday.” Ori gives a half-hearted smile and nods, and after a minute or two, Óin stands. “Are you all right on your own now? I’d like to get back and check on Balin. He’s helping with the banquet tonight, and then Bilbo’s going to try to slip away so we’ve all got to go say goodbye.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ori says, standing as well, and Fíli joins him. He wants to take Ori’s hand but he can’t. “Dori’s going to have an aneurysm if he doesn’t see me well.”

They walk back to the great hall and stand in the back of the crowd. Fíli walks back to the front—walking _through_ some of the other guests, which is unsettling—to join the group of dead dwarves standing amongst the company. Many of them flash him sympathetic looks as he takes his place near Kíli, Thorin, Frerin, and Li.

“Is Ori all right?” Kíli asks.

“He will be. Uthran?”

Thorin, who has been staring at his own dead body for a probably unhealthy length of time, looks at him.

“Yes?”

“I think we should… stay away. All three of us. From here. I want to be there when our parents find out still, but after that, we’re not really helping anybody. If they can feel us hanging around all the time, it’s a constant reminder that we’re not actually here. I think the company deserves time to accept our deaths before we visit again.”

“I think you’re right,” Thorin sighs.

Frerin nods, just slightly, and Fíli frowns.

“You knew?”

“Every dwarf in the halls discovers that at some point,” he admits. “It’s usually easier to find it out yourselves.”

Fíli turns back to the speaker. He feels slightly sick at the idea of leaving his friends to grieve on their own, but then he thinks of the fact that Ori _knows he’s there_ , and knowing hurts him, and his resolve is hardened. He doesn’t really love Ori—not yet—but the idea of causing him further pain is still antithetical to the core of him. He listens to the low chanting sound of the final prayers over his body, and blinks away the tears that threaten to storm the corners of his eyes.

All in all, it’s a beautiful funeral.

\---

Fíli, Thorin, and Kíli all visit Dís and Bala when they receive the raven—they check in, every day for weeks until it arrives. Dis weeps, the first time her sons have ever seen her do so, and Bala shakes like a banner snapping in the wind. The raven flees when Dis swings at it angrily, and the letter is passed between them and shoved away so often that it tears. Silence and loud, raw, unrepentant cries vie for most of the day, but the worst moment, for Fíli, is when Bala goes to leave the room—he doesn’t know why—and collapses against the doorframe. He is at her side immediately as she sinks to the floor, babbling like a child in a futile attempt to comfort her, but when he looks over his shoulder he finds that Dis hasn’t even looked up. She, who has been wearing a brave face for his entire life, is lost, frightened, distant. Her tears have dried but a low, continuous cry pulls itself from her lips. He looks at Bala, who is biting her fist so hard he fears she might draw blood, and he can’t stand it anymore.

Kíli had left earlier for a few moments to calm himself—Fíli stays for a long time, watching the late afternoon sun sink towards evening. He and Kíli used to sneak around here, sitting under the windows so they could listen in on the adults’ conversation in the kitchen; now, instead, he walks around the side of the building and leans against the outer wall of their old bedroom, trying to put space between himself and his mothers. He feels guilty for it, but there is only so much he can take. After a while, Kíli joins him, and without speaking takes Fíli’s hand and leans his head against his shoulder. He hasn’t done that for years. Somewhere around age fifty he had decided he needed to be bold and entirely self-sufficient in order to be a prince, and public displays of affection with his family had not been part of that image. They had stopped calling Bala “mama,” too, but they have both done that today without even thinking of it.

“How does Thorin stand it?” Kíli asks quietly, when the first night star appears and Thorin is still inside.

“I don’t know.” Fíli considers it. “He’s been doing it most of his life, I suppose. The dragon, Azanulbizar, exile… Always plenty of mourners to comfort.”

“Maker above. I never thought of that.”

“Me neither.”

After a few more minutes, Thorin appears. He doesn’t look tired, per se, but both of his nephews recognize the look on his face, and they know it’s time to go. They go back inside, and all of them bestow unfelt kisses and murmur unheard words. Dis and Bala have stopped crying, exhausted, and sit leaning against each other, their fingers loosely linked. Fíli thinks about what he told Kíli—that they will look after each other, and be all right—and thinks that it might, eventually, be true.

Then Fíli goes back to the halls of the dead. He smiths, he cooks, he plays his fiddle. He listens, for hours on end, to his ancestors tell stories of when his parents and pseudo-parents were young—stories untainted by sorrow, that even Thorin and Balin have forgotten. Occasionally it pains him to think that he will never have such stories of his own to tell, and Frerin tries to talk to him about it (fulfilling his roles as both uncle and self-appointed guide to the afterlife), but Li often steers him away, and distracts Fíli with something pleasantly exhausting, like an ax-throwing or plate-juggling competition. Fíli likes Frerin enormously—he’s a lot like Kíli, if a bit more on the serious side—but he is grateful for Li for these diversions. There are some things he doesn’t like to talk about still. He also grows quite attached to Lilah, who is confident enough to hold her own with the Longbeard side of the family but much less dramatic. She comes from an enormous mining family of nine sisters in the southeast, which means she can drink any one of them under the table and has enough bawdy jokes and stories to last a lifetime—but as the middle child of all her siblings, she knows how to keep peace, as well, and sometimes peace is exactly what Fíli needs.

Finally, after eight months have passed, they all agree that the occasional visit to the land of the living is permissible. The repairs in Dale and Erebor have progressed in leaps and bounds, and all of the dwarves of the company are claiming roles for themselves in the reestablished kingdom. The settlement at Ered Luin has erupted into a frenzy of packing and making plans. To Kíli’s shock, he finds Tauriel there. She is awkward and she sticks out, but she pitches in to help wherever she is needed, and Bala and Dís treat her—well, not like a _daughter_ , per se, but perhaps as an estranged niece they’ve offered to care for and hope to know better. More kindly than many dwarves would treat a wandering elf who came bearing news of their late son. Fíli teases his brother mercilessly for what he deems a posthumous marriage, but nothing can wipe the obvious joy from Kíli’s face.

And he has plenty of things to tease Fíli about in return, because for every visit he makes to his mothers, to Balin and Dwalin, to his cousin Gimli or his old friend Nali—he makes two to Ori.

He can’t _help_ it, really. All of his other relatives met their ones on the same side of the divide. They know how it felt to fall in love. They know what they have in common with their one, and what it was that makes their heartbeats fit so well together. Fíli doesn’t. So he tries to learn. He goes back to visit and observe Ori, to get to know him better than he did in life, and—predictably, inevitably—he falls in love.

Almost immediately, Ori takes over the restoration of the library in Erebor. It’s a difficult task because he’s doing it more or less alone. There are other rooms that are more important, in the short term, but Balin grants Ori permission to spend a few hours every week repairing shelves, reorganizing the chaotic pile of books and scrolls, and repairing the pages that have torn and faded. By the time Fíli starts visiting regularly, Ori has mainly moved on to this final task, so he spends hours just sitting and watching as Ori painstakingly sews bindings, oils spines, cuts new parchment, and paints over calligraphy. It takes a long, long time; Ori has not earned his mastery yet, and he is obviously nervous about making a mistake, but still he is calmer than Fíli has ever seen. His task is delayed, too, by his unfamiliarity with the manuscripts he is working on. More than once, he looks around surreptitiously to make sure no one else is in sight, puts away his inks, and just… reads. Fíli has never had much patience for schooling—he is too easily frustrated by things that do not interest him—so he marvels at Ori’s patience. When he smiles or laughs at something, Fíli bends over his shoulder to read it, and he learns that Ori likes poetry more than prose. All kinds of poetry, from limericks to the long epic poems that Fíli only knows because Thorin has played some of them on the harp. One day, he finds that Ori is fixing the binding on one that he knows: _Bunt Under Seven Suns_.

“This one’s my favorite,” he says, putting his finger on the cover page, which is embossed with the head of a great, strange beast. “It’s about a dwarf from east of the Orocani, named Bunt. Her family is all under a curse, and she’s the seventh child so she’s the only one who can free them by—some kind of act of bravery or something like that. On the longest day of summer when the sun is still shining she has to go to the priests and prove that she’s done something worthy of breaking the curse, and it takes her seven years. My amad used to read it to me and Kíli all the time, and Thorin set it to music for her birthday once.”

Ori pauses on the page and tilts his head.

“Do I know this…?” he asks himself quietly. He thinks for a bit, and then picks up the book and settles back in his chair. Fíli sits by him. He doesn’t know if Ori heard him or not—he’s not hopeful enough to wonder—but he sits for several hours beside him, reading the book. He reads slower than Ori so he misses many of the lines, but he doesn’t really care. He sees the way that Ori falls into the stories, his delight in the words, and his heart softens.

There are other things, too, that he finds to love about Ori. He had always thought him a bit meek, but with his eyes open he can see that the young dwarf has spirit. He spends a fair amount of time just sitting back and watching Ori with his brothers, which is amusing; Fíli gets along very well with his brother, and his mother and Thorin, though they bicker, are very alike. The Brothers Ri, on the other hand, are as dissimilar from each other as three brothers can be, and the simple fact that there are _three_ of them makes their relationship that much more complicated. He had thought, during the journey, that Dori mothered Ori and Ori hero-worshipped Nori, but the truth is more difficult and more delightful to watch. Behind closed doors, at least, Nori is just as protective of his younger brother as Dori is, Dori is quite a bit tougher than he appeared, and Ori is not inclined to hero-worship either of them. Fíli laughs out loud more than once just at the _faces_ he makes when his siblings got into a row. “Stop it, the pair of you, you’re acting like idiots,” is one of his favorite phrases.

What surprises Fíli the most, though, is seeing how confident Ori is with himself. Maybe it’s something that emerges after the quest, or maybe it’s something that’s just more obvious when Ori isn’t in the presence of larger-than-life figures like Thorin or Dwalin. Whatever it is, in the months and years following, Ori begins to take himself and his position seriously, and the dwarves around him do the same. At first, he continues to rule the library at Erebor with an iron fist—although, when Balin points out that scribes with their mastery will be arriving soon from Ered Luin, he reluctantly agrees to accept the position as Dain’s personal scribe instead, an offer that makes several Iron Hills dwarves turn brick red with envy. He starts training with more weapons; the slingshot is still his specialty, and he wields it with deadly accuracy, but he also learns the ax well enough that, a month after Fíli starts visiting, Dwalin himself takes on his tutelage. And he _argues_. This is startling and delightful to Fíli, who has never seen Ori argue in his life, except with his brothers. Ori argues with the other members of the Company when they debate politics, and with dwarves from the Iron Hills when they presume to tell the dwarves of Erebor what should be done with their own kingdom, and once he even argues with Dain. Halfway through he realizes what he’s doing, turns white as a sheet, and starts stuttering like a mouse (as if Dain cares whether anyone contradicts him), but the fact is, he does it, and seeing Ori have confidence in his own opinions makes Fíli’s heart swell.

Secretly, though, he thinks that Ori is the bravest when he has his attacks. They don’t happen very often, at least not that Fíli can see, and they never last for more than twenty minutes or so, but watching them is horrible because he can’t _do_ anything. He just has to watch as Ori breathes harder, shakes, gets dizzy, clutches his head or his stomach like he’s going to be sick, and wrestles with himself. But afterwards he just… gets up. Sometimes it takes a few minutes of sitting and breathing normally, sometimes not. He stands up, puts on a jumper, makes himself a cup of tea, and goes on with his day. For Fíli, the worst thing in the world would be to lose control of his mind—to have it stop him dead in his tracks, reduce his body to a quivering, terrified mess without being able to do anything about it. The fact that Ori can stand this, and survive it, on a daily basis, is incredible to him.

And for all of this, for all the new things he has learned, Ori is still Ori. He still scribbles in his notebook without showing it to anyone, and braids his hair with lavender ribbon, and accepts the knitted things his brother makes for him, and smiles shyly whenever anyone compliments him.

“Ori,” Fíli says one day. It is early in the morning, and Ori is sitting at the table with a stick of charcoal in his hand, absently drawing a geometric pattern onto a scrap of paper. “I love you.”

There is no reply. No flickering of Ori’s expression that indicates he even feels a vague sense of Fíli’s presence. Dwalin’s mood and attitude always change, subtly, when Thorin is with him; Tauriel’s awareness of Kíli is so good that they can have conversations without words, almost, although she can’t see or hear him properly. (This is a source of utter befuddlement towards all of the dead dwarves, and Frerin attributes it to the elves’ unique relationship with death.) Ori almost never notices Fíli.

“I’m sorry, darling,” he sighs, putting one hand over Ori’s.

Ori stands.

“I’m going into Dale today,” he tells Dori. “Dain wants me to sit in on their council meeting. I might stay there for dinner, depending on how long it takes.”

He kisses Dori on the cheek, which he doesn’t always do, and Fíli wonders hopefully if maybe Ori did sense an increased amount of affection in the room and simply assumed it was coming from the wrong source. Ori collects his things and leaves, but Fíli sits there for a long time, staring into their cooking fire as Dori cleans the dishes and hums a tune he doesn’t recognize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dashatunai/dashatunana—sister-son  
> ukran—rabbi (literally "master," which is what rabbi means in Hebrew)  
> Gêdulbagd—happy wind  
> Uthran—darer (Richard Armitage talks in a behind the scenes video of the significance of Thorin’s name, which does literally mean Darer.)  
> Zarinruzud—steadfast son  
> na—short for “nadad,” which means brother  
> makhabbûn—lit. “one who has been forged,” short for “one who has been forged with you.” The dwarven equivalent of the word soulmate, as soulmates are thought to be dwarves who were created by Mahal at the same time.


	2. Chapter 2

Five years after Fíli’s death, he is working in the forge he shares with Thorin and Thrain when his brother comes in. Fíli greets him, and Kíli sits down and watches him work. Fíli has known how to do the basics—pots and pans, horseshoes and parts for ploughs, a simple ax—for years, but with his substantial increase in free time he’s moved on to trickier pieces, and now he’s forging a matched set of knives. So far he has two large boot knives, two large vambrace knives, and two small boot knives. Now he is working on a small knife that can be concealed in a hair pin. He works on it for a few minutes more, but then he can no longer take the look on his brother’s face and he sets it aside.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kíli says. “I visited Erebor today. Have you been there lately?”

“Not really,” Fíli shrugs. “Is Tauriel there?”

“No, she’s gone to Mirkwood for a while. Missed it. I went to see Mum and Amad first—they’re doing fine, and Amad and Dain get on like a forge on fire—and then I checked in on Balin. He and Dori and Dwalin were gossiping.”

“Oh like _that’s_ anything new,” Fíli snorts. The three of them have been doing nothing but gossip since the caverns had started arriving from Ered Luin, over a year ago. There is always plenty to gossip about. “Any more fist fights over rooms? Has Dain or Dwalin got pulled into any more?”

“One,” Kíli says with a bit of a grin. “That idiot Zhan tried to claim that Fundin’s old chambers belonged to his father. Dwalin fought him and his whole family—and Dain’s the only one who can pull Dwalin out of a fight, so he had to get involved to. But anyway, I thought you should know… I mean I don’t know if you’ve heard already but…” Kíli hesitated and sighed, meeting Fíli’s gaze. “Someone from the Blue Mountains is courting Ori.”

Fíli’s heart skips a beat, but he does his best to keep his face calm. He’s wondered if this would happen. It’s not a surprise, really. Ori’s approaching ninety now, he’s single, he’s well-off, he’s… wonderful. No surprise someone wants to court him.

“Good,” he manages to force out after a few seconds. Kíli raises an eyebrow.

“ _Good_?”

“Good. Look, it’s—it’s different for you, alright? Tauriel knows you love her, she knows she loves you back. She couldn’t be happy with anyone else, knowing that, could she? But Ori doesn’t know. So if he’s always wanted to—get married or whatever, then good for him. He can still be happy with someone who isn’t _destined_ to be with him. Plenty of dwarves are.”

“I guess,” Kíli says, but it doesn’t seem to sit right with him. Fíli reaches for the bellows and increases the heat on the blade of his knife so he can work it again, and he can feel his brother’s eyes on his face. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“Come off it, Fíli. You can still be upset. It’s not like it’ll make Ori feel bad.”

“I’m not upset,” Fíli says firmly, banging on the tip of his blade so hard that it bends at a ninety degree angle.

He curses and tosses it aside, leaning on the anvil while he tries to wrestle his emotions back in place. Kíli stands and walks over to him. He sets his hands on the anvil and leans forward so his forehead gently touches Fíli’s. A tiny smile flickers on Fíli’s face, just to acknowledge that his brother is trying to look out for him, and that he _is_ the best at it. They’re mirror images of each other, like always—one dark, one fair, one taller and one shorter, but always in synch. Fíli sighs.

“You know, I don’t _like_ death very much,” Kíli says in a conversational tone. “It’s not bad, really, but it’s got a lot of flaws. The elves might have the right way about it, the whole immortality bit?”

“You and your elves,” Fíli mocks in a hoarse voice. He stands straight and clears his throat. “Thanks, Gêdulbagd. Do you know who Ori’s courting, by the way?”

Kíli wincs.

“Um… it’s Nali.”

Fíli swears again.

\---

He goes to the land of the living soon afterwards. Of course he does. Someone is courting his one, and Fíli has to see it—as difficult as it is to observe without fuming.

It’s not that Nali is a bat sort. She isn’t. In fact, she’s one of the few dwarves from Ered Luin that Fíli had counted himself as really _close_ to. She is a cousin, like most of the settlement, a very distant cousin on Bala’s side, and she has never been intimidated by Fíli and Kíli, or tried to bluster his way into their friendship. She’s a simple lass who likes carpentry, stories, and meat pies, and she laughs at everyone’s jokes all the time, and she’s a good listener. She’s also (Fíli admits reluctantly) attractive—a bit taller than Ori, stocky, with a thick and neatly-kept brown beard. It makes sense for Ori to like her, sure.

But after two visits, Fíli becomes convinced that she is _wrong_ for Ori. Not just imperfect, but _wrong_. Because Nali is very nice, yes, but boring. Fíli and Kíli had tried to convince her to join the quest for Erebor, and she had refused. She just hadn’t seen the point. She has absolutely none of the fire that Fíli has seen in Ori, and their values are wildly different. On the second time Fíli visits, Nali and Ori are having a meal in Nali’s rooms (no nosy brothers), and Ori is eagerly talking about some obscure old history book he’s found in the library. He babbles on for maybe five minutes and Fíli, who has never in his life been interested in the Stiffbeard/Ironfist court intrigues of the late Second Age, finds himself wanting to ask questions. Partly because he wants to know and partly because Ori looks so excited, and he just wants to hear him speak more.

He glances over his shoulder and sees that Nali’s eyes have glazed over, and automatically he reaches out to jab her in the sides, like he used to do when Nali fell asleep during their Khuzdul lessons.

“Pay attention,” he hisses. His words have no effect.

After a moment, Ori trails off apologetically.

“I don’t mean to ramble,” he says, playing with the cuffs of his sleeves. “Sorry—”

“No, don’t,” Nali says with a smile. She puts one big hand over Ori’s. “It’s really interesting.”

“You’re a liar,” Ori chuckles. “And a bad one.”

“I am not…” Ori raises an eyebrow and Nali gives in. “All right, _I’ve_ always thought history was as dull as a pile of leaves, but it’s great that _you’re_ interested. And I can just sit here and listen and nod for as long as you like. Really.”

If anyone asked Fíli, he would say that Ori can’t be happy with someone who isn’t fully engaged in his eager digressions—not when it took him so long to speak to people without being shy about it—but nobody asks him. Ori, flush in the excitement of a new relationship, just laughs and leans in for a kiss, and Fíli’s stomach twists itself into knots. He wants Ori to be happy. _He wants Ori to be happy_.

Dori likes Nali. Nori thinks Nali is dull, and doesn’t try to hide it, but gives his lackluster approval anyway. And Ori seems to like Nali well enough. Well enough to kiss her and hold her hand and give her presents—sketches, mostly, and bits of embroidery and a pair of warm knitted gloves. They’ve only been courting for a month, and already they settle into a comfortable familiarity. Fíli spends so much time sulking that _Thorin_ advises him to “perk up,” a phrase he had never thought to hear from his uncle’s lips.

“It’s not like I _dislike_ her,” he grumbles, chin in his hand. “It’s just—where did this _come_ from? Nali never said a word about Ori to me in the Blue Mountains. Did she say anything to you?”

His cousin Gimli, who is sharpening an axe in the armories of Erebor and totally oblivious to Fíli’s presence, does not respond.

“They never talked back then, because they didn’t have anything in common, and as far as I can tell they don’t have anything in common now, either. I don’t know. I’m just feeling a bit… blindsided. I thought I would have more time before I had to think of Ori courting. He’s only, what, eighty-six or eighty-seven? But I guess if he has to be courting somebody, Nali’s a good option. Better Nali than—I don’t know. The Stonehelm. Or that prick Thom who was always trying to be my right-hand dwarf. Or _you_ ,” he says with a grin, nudging Gimli’s side. “Someone who’d actually feel like my replacement.”

He pauses.

“That’s _mean_ ,” he sighs. “It’s not that Nali’s not competition. She’s my friend. If she can be happy with Ori, and if Ori can be happy with her, then I’ll accept that… I just don’t think they _will_. But then, I suppose I’ll feel that way about anybody trying to court my one, won’t I?”

This time he waits for a reply. He waits for Gimli to shrug, mutter to himself. Anything. Fíli sighs again and rests his elbow on Gimli’s head, which Gimli has always punched him for. It’s more difficult now—Gimli has had a bit of a growth spurt. He has already grown a beard longer than Fíli’s, which he has neatly braided into two loose plaits. His hair is as red as his father’s, and it occurs to Fíli for the first time that his little cousin is very close to being an _adult_ , old enough to go on adventures and probably break a few hearts of his own. It’s a strange thought, and even stranger when he remembers that Gimli will one day grow to be older than Fíli.

“I miss talking to you, cousin,” he says quietly. “You’re a bit annoying, but that’s all sixty-year-olds so I can’t blame you for it. And you’ve always been good at getting right to the important things.”

He sits for a while and watches Gimli work. The young dwarf is careful with his whetstone; the axe he is sharpening is an old one, and as his hands work, his eye is carefully examining the blade for any nicks or thin sections that must be treated with extra delicacy. At the same time, though, Fíli knows that sharpening a weapon is a task often accompanied by a wandering mind, that latches itself onto one idea and toys with it unceasingly until the duty is finished. He wonders where Gimli’s mind is now.

After a long time sitting in peace and silence, Fíli closes his eyes and exhales, and wakes up in the cave he has begun to think of as his. It is no different than any other cave, but it gives him a sense of comfort to know that the same walls have held him close when he wept for all he lost and for when he felt warmth and love radiating through his veins. He has tried not to bring his thoughts to his family; Thorin is sometimes still haunted by his worries and regrets, and Fíli doesn’t want to be the catalyst for his uncle’s struggles; Kíli has managed to attain a remarkable degree of peace with his death, and only has occasional qualms about his life, and Fíli will never grow out of the habit of protecting his brother. Frerin seems to understand, and they do talk sometimes about the difficulty of dying young, but mostly Fíli has shown his thoughts to these stone walls, and he finds their embrace soothing.

He does not go back to the surface just yet. He tips his head back against the rock and starts to hum, listening to the way his voice thrums through the passage. Hesitantly, he tries to sing a melody from a travelling song his mother knew, but it doesn’t sound as nice—his voice is a shade too high—and he fades back into silence.

Fíli decides, suddenly, that he wants to see Ori. He has just gone to see him three or four days ago, but he thinks a few hours may have passed in the realm of the living, and he will be able to sit with Ori in the last hours of the evening as he sits alone, or maybe with his brothers, and he can remind himself that Ori is his one and he loves him, and nothing can make that any less true. He opens his eyes and finds himself in… Ered Luin?

Fíli blinks, confused at this sudden shift of location, because it’s impossible. Ered Luin is many months away from Erebor, and it’s not possible that Ori has made that journey since last Fíli saw him—and why would he even want to? The Blue Mountains are all but empty now except for a few old Broadbeam families that have been living there for centuries on end, and Ori’s family was from the Lonely Mountain, too. But Fíli is in a house, a Man-style house like the ones they built in exile, and he is facing a window that offers a glimpse of the mountain skyline he has known since he was a babe.

He must be in the wrong place, he thinks with a frown. Something, someone, crept into his mind at the last moment when he slipped through the veil, and he hasn’t visited Ori at all.

“Fíli!”

Before he can register what is happening, Ori runs forward and hugs him, and all the breath leaves Fíli’s lungs at once.  _How_? Ori can see him—can touch him—Fíli can feel the scratch of his hair against his cheek, and the warmth of his body beneath his clothes, and those are details he’s never managed to feel before—Ori is  _here_.

And then Ori draws back and beams at him.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve—I’ve missed you, too, Ori,” he manages. “Where are we?”

“This is our house,” Ori says simply. “Mine and Dori’s, and Nori’s whenever he bothers to come home. You’ve never visited before, have you? Well, you’re here now. And just in time for a bit of lunch—come on, sit down.”

He gestures towards the table, and suddenly all of Fíli’s confusion melts away. Sitting at the table is Bilbo, Thorin Stonehelm, and the elven king Thranduil—looking both regal and ridiculous as he peers down his nose at Fíli with his knees bunched up against the low dwarven table. Ori is dreaming. This is a dream.

But still, he thinks in a bemused haze, Ori can see him, and Ori has grabbed him by the hand and is leading him to the table. It’s real enough for him to enjoy it. He sits down and touches a hand to Ori’s cheek, brushing a thumb over his freckles like he’s been wanting to do for years.

“How are you, darling?” he asks, ignoring the other lunch guests. This is a dream, and  _they’re_  all alive so it doesn’t really matter at all.

“Oh, stop it,” Ori laughs, drawing away and turning to his food. There is a huge plate of chips on the table, and a suckling pig, and a big bowl of that salad they ate in Rivendell. Thorin Stonehelm digs into the pork. Bilbo eats chips with a knife and fork. Thranduil eats individual pieces of lettuce, eyeing the pig with a dubious glance.

“Stop what?” Fíli says, a smile playing at the edge of lips. “Do you not like ‘darling’? What about ‘treasure’? ‘My dove’? Or what is it Dori calls you—pet? Little lamb?”

“I don’t remember you being this much of a flirt,” Ori teases, but his face is bright red and it seems to Fíli that he withdraws, just a little bit, and so he too pulls back. He reminds himself that Ori has no idea they’re destined; he might be bold here in his own mind, but he’s still  _Ori_. He’s modest at heart, and not used to attention. Mahal, he hasn’t even courted anyone until about a month ago—but Fíli doesn’t want to think about that.

“Only for you, Ori-love,” he says, borrowing another one of Dori’s pet names with a wink. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop if it’s making you uncomfortable.”

“Not at all. Come on, eat something. It’s been an age since we’ve talked, hasn’t it? Do you know everyone?”

“Yes,” Fíli says, smiling at Bilbo and exchanging a cool nod with Thranduil. “Although my cousin only by reputation.”

“As long as it’s a good one,” Thorin says cheerfully.

Ori passes Fíli a plate, and he fills it and just… sits there. Having a meal with his one—and some other guests, who occasionally contribute to the conversation but say nothing at all of importance—and talking to him, and touching him. He can’t help it. Every few minutes he feels the need to reach out and cover Ori’s hand with his own, or lean over to nudge him in the side or speak into his ear. Ori is more real in this dream, brighter, warmer, than he is normally. He looks good. He smiles and laughs easily, and he is comfortable in Fíli’s presence. His clothes fit him a bit better; he still likes them loose and soft, and there’s no power on earth that can pry him away from his knitwear, but he can afford better quality material now, and Fíli thinks he might see more of Ori, and less of Dori, in the style. He’s grown his hair out, too. A few small braids done with ribbons still frame his face, but the rest has been pulled back into one long braid that falls past his shoulders. Simpler than either of his brothers’, Fíli thinks with a smile.

“Ori,” he says quietly after a while, when the window is showing a yellow sunset on the mountain peaks. “You know I love you, don’t you?”

Ori’s eyes widen, but he tries to keep his face from showing any reaction.

“Stop,” he says lightly, trying to sound like he’s teasing. Like he’s not hoping it’s true. “You’re horrible.”

“Sorry,” Fíli sighs, drawing back. “I wish… I wish we could talk more often like this.”

“Drop by any time.”

“I will. Do you need help with the dishes?”

“Yes, please.”

Fíli stands and so do the other guests, and together they all launch into a rousing chorus of Blunt the Knives, and Fíli decides that being in someone else’s dream, when he himself is fully conscious of what’s going on, is truly bizarre. He flips a steak knife in Thranduil’s direction, and closes his eyes for a brief moment, and feels the whole world lurch.

When he opens his eyes again, he is in Erebor; he can feel it in the air. He is in Ori’s bedroom, and Ori is awake. His eyes are open, staring right through Fíli, and Fíli can’t read the expression on his face. He sits on the edge of the bed and speaks in a gentle voice.

“Hi, love. Did you sleep well?”

Ori sits up and pulls his knees tight against his chest. His eyes are wide with confusion and pain, and Fíli says “Ori…” and reaches out. Before he can touch Ori’s shoulder, the other dwarf buries his face in his arms and weeps. He heaves great sobs that make his back shake and his breath come in heavy, broken pants, and Fíli feels like someone has punched him.  _He_  did this. No one else. Ori isn’t crying because his friends and his king are dead, or because the crowds at funerals make him panic, or because he’s stressed about living up to his unasked-for reputation as a hero.  _Fíli made him cry_.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice breaks. “Ori, I’m sorry—”

He should stay and comfort Ori or at least wait until he knows he’s okay, but Fíli does the cowardly thing. He closes his eyes, and runs away.

\---

“Are you _sure_?” Frerin repeats. Fíli—and Lilah, who has a comforting hand on Fíli’s shoulder—both glare at him.

“He spoke to me, he looked at me, he touched me. And then when he woke up, he couldn’t see me anymore. I’m positive.”

“It’s just I’ve never heard of this. Ever. A century I’ve been dead, you’d think I would have heard about dwarves talking to people in their dreams. I mean it makes sense, doesn’t it? Death and sleep are alike, and if Kíli’s elf can mix the two so easily, there is precedence for dwarves doing the same. He’ll be so relieved, by the way; he’s been feeling guilty for years over the fact that he can talk to his one and you and Thorin can’t.”

“I can’t, still,” Fíli says firmly. “I won’t. Frerin, you weren’t there, you didn’t see him. When he woke up, when he realized the whole thing was a dream…” He shudders. “I’m not going to do that to him again. It’s not good for either of us. Besides, what if he wants to get married someday, start a family? How is he going to do that without feeling guilty about me courting him in his dreams every night?” Fíli shakes his head. “Maybe Thorin and Dwalin can manage it, since they had so much time together. But I’m not going to visit anyone again. Ever.”

Frerin nods, but Fíli can see him exchanging a glance with Li. Li’s hand starts rubbing a circle in the center of his back. She sits a little closer and Fíli can smell the wisteria soap she uses on all her clothes. It’s soothing. It’s not the perfume his mother used, but it’s a motherly kind of scent.

“Fíli, dashatunana, listen to me,” she says. “I know you feel pain now—you have every right to your pain. But you are young. Did your parents tell you about the bond between makhabbân?” Fíli shakes his head. “I did not think so. My mother didn’t, not until I died. There are some things that people do not understand about finding their one. You say now that you don’t want to see Ori, but you have to realize… someday, he may need you. Beyond the way he needs a spouse or a child. There are dwarves here in these halls who know their ones but are not married to them, because they took a different spouse in life and are still loyal to them; but their relationship to their one is still deep, still destined. You see?”

“What she means is, no one knows Ori the same way you do,” Frerin interjects. “No one. And there are times when, no matter how much you might love your family or your friends or even your spouse, you  _need_  your one. Even if it hurts. Because they know how you feel, they know how you think, they know what you need. So—so now you might say you won’t talk to Ori again, but if he needs you, you can’t let fear or pain or pity keep you from being there. And if you need him, it’s all right to go to him. That’s the whole point of a makhabbûn, that someone has been made to share in your joys _and_ your pains. Just keep that in mind.”

In the back of his mind, Fíli knows that they are right. They would know better than he would, after all. But at the same time, shame is burning hot throughout his veins and he can’t stop thinking of Ori crying, and he really  _doesn’t_  want to hear advice right now.

“Thanks,” he says shortly, and he stands. “I’m—I’m going to go find Kíli.”

He leaves the room before Li and Frerin can say anything else, and winds his way through the crowd of dwarves in the hallway, some of whom he knows from life, others from legend. No one knows how large the halls are, or how many rooms it contains, or how many dwarves are occupying them, or how they can all manage to walk around and find each other without getting lost, but somehow they do. Fíli wanders for a few minutes before finding himself in one of the smaller dining rooms, with a table just big enough for about ten people, where Kíli is sitting and trying to figure out a puzzle their grandfather Dal had made him. It is a tricky one, with five metal rings all in a continuous loop that have to be unlocked. Kíli’s fingers diligently trace the second ring, searching for the abnormality, and he stares at the puzzle with an intensity slightly ruined by the fact that the tip of his tongue is poking out of his mouth. Fíli smiles, which he hadn’t expected to be doing so soon, and falls into the chair beside his brother. Kíli looks up and frowns.

“Na? You all right?”

Fíli waves his hand noncommittally.

“Do you want to go look at some of your flowers or something?” he offers.

“Not really. Do you want to help me figure out this ridiculous thing?”

“No. Want to get drunk?”

“Only if we can invite Grandfather Thror,” Kíli grins, and Fíli knows he has come to the right person. They’ve seen their grandfather drunk only once so far—it was a memorable night that included Thror singing four bawdy songs, giving a rousing reenactment of his own death in which he played both himself and Azog and Thorin (who, in this alternate history, slew Azog at Azanublizar), and eventually hugging both of his great-grandsons close while he blubbered on about how much they reminded him of his grandchildren.

“Absolutely.”

\---

Almost a year later, Bombur’s wife Tom gives birth to their thirteenth—and _final_ , they swear—child. The company, living and dead, are wild with delight over it, and on the first day that the child can be seen, Fíli, Kíli, and Thorin join the rest of the throng in Bombur’s family chambers. The rooms are large, but absolutely packed with the happy couple’s relatives, children, and friends, most bearing gifts. They all coo over little Bom, who is a healthy size with round red cheeks and two frail hairs already on her chin—a good omen. Somehow, Ori manages to maneuver close to the baby, a smile on his face so wide it must hurt, and presents his gift to Tom. It’s a baby blanket he knitted himself. Fíli has seen him work on it; he’s fretted over places where the gauge is too tight or too loose, and compared it furtively to Dori’s more accomplished work, but the end result is a wonderful patchwork of yarn (all, Fíli is sure, unbearably soft, although he can’t really feel any subtleties like that) in different colors and patterns that draws appreciation from the crowd, and immediately Tom wraps it around the baby. Ori absolutely beams.

Eventually, however, the impromptu party turns away from the babe and towards other things—ale, mostly, and teasing the parents, and playing with Bombur’s other children, who can talk and run and play and are therefore slightly more interesting than an infant. A song starts up and Thorin and Kíli join the crowd, bobbing in time and singing just as loud as the others. If Fíli didn’t know better, he would say they were part of the party. He smiles at them for a few minutes, but then his attention is drawn to Ori, who is sitting in one of Bombur’s enormous arm chairs next to the dwarf himself. Bombur is trying to transfer Bom to Ori’s arms, and the young dwarf looks nervous.

“I’ve never really known any babies,” he confesses. “I’m the youngest in my family, of course, and by the time I was more than a child myself, most of Dori’s friends’ children had grown up, too, and none of my friends have yet—and you know, I don’t know if Nori _has_ any friends? At least not any he would introduce to me,” he chuckles.

 _You’re doing fine_ , Bombur signs with a smile that crinkles the edges of his eyes. _She loves the blanket_.

“Did she tell you so?” Ori jokes, but by that point the babe is safely in his arms and his attention is caught. He coos at her and rocks her gently, and for someone who doesn’t know any babies, he seems to be very good at them. Fíli has spared a few moments over the years regretting  the fact that he will never have children of his own, but seeing his one like this, cradling the infant close to his chest—Maker, it makes his womb ache.

“She’s amazing, Bombur,” Fíli says, patting him on the shoulder. “You’re a lucky dwarf, you know that? For her _and_ for Tom.”

He looks over his shoulder at Tom, who is celebrating her final successful birth by downing as much ale as she can manage, and leaving the care of her children to Bofur and Bifur, who are more than up to the task by this point. When he looks back, Bombur is signing again.

 _We wanted to ask you something. Tom is busy, but she agrees: we’d like you to be akrugadad_.

Ori’s eyes widen.

“ _Me_? I just told you I don’t know anything about children!”

 _You were there for Tom when she was expecting. And you are a good dwarf_.

“But—but what about Bofur, or Bifur, or Tom’s brother?”

 _They already have four akrunaddan each. Just say yes_.

“Well…” Bom yawns, and Fíli can almost see Ori’s resolve melt. “Yes, of course I will. Thank you. I’ll—I’ll do the best I can.”

Kíli walks up behind Fíli and rests his elbow on Fíli’s shoulder.

“This is sickening,” Kíli says cheerfully.

“Shut it. I always wanted to have kids, you know,” he adds, somewhat wistfully, and Kíli tweaks one of his braids.

“No you didn’t. You just want them now because you think that Ori will think you’re handsome if you get fat. Face it, na, we’re going to be scrawny for all eternity. Nothing to be done about it now.”

“I suppose not,” he sighs, and joins his brother in the crowd of dwarves on the other side of the room.

\---

The next time Fíli visits Ori, he is sitting at his kitchen table with both of his brothers, sniffling into a handkerchief because he has just broken it off with Nali. Dori is disappointed, but optimistic at the possibility of Ori now courting someone a little higher on the social scale—after all, the quest for Erebor has granted their family some degree of legitimacy and there’s nothing wrong with capitalizing on it. Nori is torn, because he has always thought Nali was incredibly boring, but he’d rather his little brother date someone boring than someone who could get him into trouble. And Ori just feels awful, because he’s hurt someone, and that’s not in his nature.

“And it’s not like I didn’t _like_ her,” he says, more than once. “It’s just—I can’t explain it—it didn’t feel like I thought it would. I don’t know why.”

Fíli, who knows why, silently rests his chin on Ori’s shoulder and hopes that his presence is somewhat helpful. He is feeling a strange mixture of disappointment and relief, and he is very glad that he isn’t required to actually _say_ anything.

He finds himself in the exact position at least six times over the next two decades or so. Ori has courtships—some as long as a year and a half, some as short as a month—with a whole host of dwarves, not a one alike. A dwarrowdam from the Eastern mountains who is a head taller than him and more tattood than Dwalin. A fox-faced associate of Nori’s who is run out of town six months after Ori meets him. A poet who lives with their patron in Dale. Even a minor Dwarf Lord who gives Dori excited palpitations, until he proves himself to be so rude that he is thrown out of their chambers in the middle of dinner, and never returns. Ori likes all of them, but after a while they all fade away, and Fíli can tell that it’s beginning to bother him.

But Ori’s a cheerful sort, and more often than not he seems happy. He earns his mastery and puts out a book on the Quest for Erebor. It isn’t the first, and he receives some criticism for the dry tone, but Fíli thinks it’s marvelous—and if Ori doesn’t want to go into detail about his own emotions during the trip, then that’s his right. He more than makes up for it with his wonderful drawings and his attention to detail. Each step is recorded precisely, and it earns a special place in the fully-restored library of Erebor.

In fact, all of the members of the company are doing remarkably well, which is a relief to their friends in the land of the dead. Bombur is the head of the kitchens and Gloin of the treasury. Nori’s activities are now at least fifty percent legitimate, as he can claim they are related to his duties as an official spy. Dwalin commands the army; Balin commands the legions of scholars, scribes (Ori is preeminent among their number), and councilors. Dori’s weaving is now being traded throughout Middle Earth on a greater scale than ever before, and Bofur and Bifur have managed to devote themselves full-time to their toymaking business. Óin is no more than an everyday healer—if an exceptional one—but Fíli knows his cousin well enough to know that’s all he’s ever wanted to be, anyway.

He is most relieved to see his mothers adjusting to life in the Lonely Mountain. They’re quieter than they used to be—sadder—and Dís doesn’t laugh nearly as much as she used to, but he was right. They lean on each other, and to an unfamiliar eye they are almost as content they were in the Blue Mountains. Bala semi-retires, and donates most of her time towards making clothes for the needy of Erebor and Dale. It’s just like her to bury her grief in helping others, and she keeps Kíli’s runestone in her pocket always. Dís, on the other hand, retains her rightful title of Princess of Erebor, and puts it best to use as a diplomat. The cordiality of her relationship with Thranduil is a complete shock to the inhabitants of both the Lonely Mountain and Mirkwood, but her sons, who have seen her interact with Tauriel, are not surprised. Tauriel herself spends most of her time in Mirkwood, doing the same thing she has been doing for centuries already, but she travels to the Lonely Mountain every few months.

After a few years, Fíli also begins to visit her along with Kíli. It’s a bit disconcerting, having her acknowledge him, although their connection is much fuzzier than hers and Kíli’s. The two of them can half-speak, not with exact words, but with intentions and tone. She can get only the vaguest sense of Fíli’s attitude, but she still talks to him, obviously eager to make a good impression, and through Kíli, Fíli can half-speak back. He visits Dwalin, too, and sometimes finds that Thorin is already there. It’s harder to tell what Dwalin notices, because he doesn’t often speak, but he does sense Thorin, most days. Thorin has learned to read the little cues—Dwalin humming an old song they sang together, or making a meal that Thorin loved, or suddenly removing his wedding ring so he can turn it over in his hands. Once, after Fíli and Thorin have both been with him for several hours, Dwalin lifts his fiddle to his shoulder and plays a song he had taught Fíli when Fíli was just a boy, which Fíli had played proudly for him upwards of thirty times. Excited, he looks to his uncle, and Thorin smiles and nods.

Fíli seeks out those little moments of recognition—when Dwalin plays his song, or Dís wears beads she made for him in her own hair, or Bala picks up a carving he made and holds it close to her chest, or Ori rereads _Bunt Under Seven Suns_. But still, for years he avoids the easiest way to find them. He does not visit Ori in his dreams.

And then he visits one day to find Ori resting on Nori’s shoulder, looking thoroughly exhausted.

“Don’t tell Dori just yet,” he says. “He’ll be so disappointed. He really liked Garen. I did too.”

“He had a big nose,” Nori says consolingly. “And he talked about pulleys far too much.”

“But he was _nice_. He talked about pulleys a lot, fine, but it was all so interesting, and he actually listened when I talked about my things, too. More than you did. I’m just… I’m just so _tired_ , Nori, I really am. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I never feel the way I try to feel and it’s just so useless. When was the last time you heard of someone my age courting so many different people and not getting married?”

“Your _age_ ,” Nori scoffs, and he clucks his tongue in a way he must have stolen from Dori. He runs his hand through Ori’s hair comfortingly. “You’ve only been of age for a few years.”

“More than thirty.”

“It happens, Ori. People take longer than they expected to find their one, and they get discouraged, and then the stars align and they marry. Or they don’t, and that’s fine too, and they don’t beat themselves over the head about it. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t find someone. Me and Dori didn’t, eh?”

“But you never wanted to,” Ori mumbles. “Right? Both of you are happy as you are.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m—not. I can’t explain it. Sometimes I forget about it, because I’m happy with what I do, and with you and Dori and Bom and my friends and everything, but if I’m still for too long I just feel… _missing_. Like I’m looking at everything through a foggy glass, and if I could just make it clear again then everything would be better. I would be different. But I don’t know how to _do_ that.”

Fíli closes his eyes. He doesn’t mean to go away—he just needs a moment to collect himself, to banish the tears in his eyes—but when he opens them again he’s in his little cave, and he thinks maybe that’s for the best. He knows how Ori feels, and it makes his stomach ache. And then he thinks of what Frerin and Li said, all those years ago, about how sometimes you just _need_ your one, and he mutters a curse. Ori needs him. Fíli has heard the desperation in his voice, the pain, and he knows that he needs to visit Ori in his dreams again. It’s going to hurt, but he has to do it. He tips his head back against the wall and waits for the hours to pass into night.

\---

He’s not in Ered Luin this time. He’s in a forest, one he doesn’t recognize, although it’s possible it’s one of the paths they traversed in the quest. He sees Ori wandering down the dirt road, staring up at the trees with his sketchbook poking out of his pack, and despite his reluctance to be here, his heart lightens.

“Ori!” he calls, jogging to catch up, and Ori looks around and smiles.

“Hi, Fíli.”

“Hi. Where are we this time?”

“I’m not quite sure, but I know we need to keep heading this way. We’re on an adventure.”

“Splendid, I haven’t had one of those in ages,” Fíli says, clapping his hands. He glances down and notices they’re both wearing the clothes they wore on the quest for Erebor. He has his fur-lined coat, which he has missed for decades, and his favorite throwing axes strapped to his boots. Good. Ori laughs at him.

“It’s really you, isn’t it?”

“Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes you don’t seem like yourself. Most of the time, really. It’s good to see you again.”

Fíli grins.

“So how often do you dream about me? Just out of curiosity?”

“Never you mind,” Ori says, walking a bit faster as his cheeks turn pink.

“Ori,” Fíli says, dragging the word out. “Come on, just give me a little estimate—”

Ori starts walking faster and Fíli hastens to catch up. He turns, walking backwards so he’s facing Ori, and then he almost stumbles and Ori laughs. Fíli turns the right way around and seizes Ori’s arm to keep his balance, and they walk together in happy silence for a few moments, arm in arm. It is an easy walk, over a rolling hill rather than a mountain, and trees bursting with green leaves and white flowers crowd the path. They grow thin enough that the leaves don’t block out the sunlight, and before him Fíli can see indigo mountains rising in the distance.

“Do you remember what you said last time?” Ori says in a conversational tone.

“Every word.” He nods politely and presses his lips together, and Fíli smiles. “Do you want me to say it again?”

“Yes, please,” Ori says. He leans closer and Fíli kisses the top of his head.

“I love you,” he says in a low voice. “Every bit of you. You’re perfect just as you are, and anyone who can’t see that just doesn’t know you like I do. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”

There is silence. Ori doesn’t seem to know how to respond, although delight is written in every line of his face.

“That’s—that’s not _quite_ what you said last time,” he points out.

“Isn’t it? That’s what I was thinking.”

“I wish…” Ori says suddenly, but then he stops and sighs.

“What, darling?” Fíli prods.

“I did a portrait of you once. In Laketown. It was at the banquet, and you were sitting next to Thorin, and it occurred to me for the first time that the two of you look alike, so I drew a little portrait. I wish I’d shown you, but I wanted to ink it first, and in the chaos of everything afterwards, I forgot about it until just now. I wish I had remembered.”

Fíli swallows.

“Maybe next time you can show it to me.”

“Maybe.”

“And I’ll bring a present for you, as well. I’ve been learning how to make jewelry. You’d like a necklace, wouldn’t you? I thought rings or bracelets might get in the way if you’re writing sometimes, but a necklace wouldn’t be a bother. With an opal on it, a big white opal with all the colors you can imagine inside…”

He trails away as Ori laughs.

“You haven’t been keeping up with the fashion, have you? Opals are in right now. There’s not a single opal to be claimed in all of Erebor, and it’ll take at least six months to get in a new shipment—and half of _those_ are claimed already, too.”

“So?” Fíli grins. “I’m crown prince. I’ll just take someone else’s.”

Ori smacks his arm.

“You can’t _do_ that. You’d be a rotten king if you did. Everyone would revolt and put the Stonehelm on the throne instead.”

“Fine. I’ll go over the Red Mountains myself and mine a new opal that no one’s paid for yet. And maybe hunt a sand-lion while I’m there. I’ve heard their pelts make good coats.”

“That might be where we’re heading now,” Ori muses, looking up at the skyline. “We _are_ going east. And that would definitely be an adventure.”

“It’ll be nice to have one on our own,” Fíli says, thinking out loud. “The last time I felt like we were _constantly_ being watched over. Your brother, Thorin, Dwalin, Balin—they all acted like the two of us and Kíli were children. I know they meant well, but it got a bit stifling, didn’t you think?”

“Well,” Ori begins dryly. He pauses and Fíli looks at him. “I was just thinking _some of us_ maybe could have used _more_ looking after.”

“Oh, because I died, you mean? You’ve got a point.”

Ori stares at him for a moment, and then he bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard that he leans heavily on Fíli’s arm for balance, and buries his head in his fur collar to muffle his voice. After a while, he manages to get out, “You are _ridiculous_ ,” and Fíli kisses the top of his head again. “You’re dead and all you’ve got to say is that I have a point.”

“Death doesn’t feel so bad right now,” Fíli admits honestly.

“Yes, well.” There is a pause. “I was just joking about you being a rotten king, you know. You would have been a great one.”

“I don’t know about ‘great.’ Good, probably. Decent.”

“Great,” Ori insists. “You have this way about you. Different than Dain or Thorin. They’re good kings, but they walk around like they don’t care if anyone likes them—they’re the king, and they’ll do what they want, and it’ll probably be the right decision but it doesn’t matter, because it’s _their_ decision. Do you know what I mean? It’s a very kingly attitude, maybe, but if you don’t already like them then it can be a bit abrasive. Whereas you… everyone loves you. You’ve got a good humor, and you walk into a room like you’re confident everyone in it _will_ like you, and you treat them in a way that makes sure they do. You’re not nervous, you’re not on the defensive, you’re just… a prince to everyone. Does that make any sense?”

“None at all,” Fíli says, startled. He stares at Ori, who is looking thoughtfully out onto the path. “Is that _really_ how you see me?”

“Yes,” Ori says simply.

“I’m nervous all the time. And I can _never_ tell if people actually like me or not.”

“They always do. And you never look nervous. Not like me—but people don’t usually notice me, so it’s not so bad. Actually, you being nervous is even more impressive, given how you and Kíli are usually the center of attention.”

“But—but none of that has anything to do with being a king,” Fíli protests. “I never did anything like Thorin or Dain did…”

“Oh what,” Ori scoffs, “being a king is about leading battles all the time? Because that’s all _they_ did when they were princes. It wasn’t until they were kings that they actually, you know, founded cities and all that, and you never got a chance to try. Being liked is part of it. It means you can make changes and people won’t despise you for them, you would really listen to people’s problems, you’d be able to trade and deal with other kingdoms, people would actually want to work for you and help you with the things you’re not as good at… You would have been a wonderful king, Fíli, because you’re a wonderful dwarf.”

Fíli stares at the ground, at his feet steadily plodding along the worn dirt path. He’s never thought about this before. Whenever he thinks about the lost possibility of being king, it’s about the things he might have done to prove he deserved it. If he were king, he could lead his people in battle bravely. If he were king, he could keep dwarves from starving or losing their homes or dying just because they can’t get medicine in time. If he were king, he could be worthy of his family’s legacy. He has never considered the possibility that some consider him worthy already. That Ori admires him.

“Would you have liked being a prince?” he asks quietly.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m hardly prince material.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true! And I would know better than you. You only really knew one king, but I’ve had very close interaction with two dwarf kings and three kings of other races—and half a dozen princes and princesses of all races. I’m nothing like you or Kíli or Thorin Stonehelm or Bain or Legolas or…”

“But that’s not fair,” Fíli points out. “Those are all first or seconds sons who have been _raised_ as princes. What you really mean is they all know how to go to war and how to speak to big groups of people, but that’s not all being a prince is, and it’s not even the most important part, sometimes. Look at princes and princesses who weren’t raised expecting it—my mother, Bala. She wouldn’t like being a crown princess, but she’s still good at what she does, isn’t she? Or Dwalin.”

“I think Dwalin would make a very good leader,” Ori says faithfully. He and Dwalin have become exceptionally good friends in the past few years, which has caused Thorin in particular no end of amusement.

“Dwalin would start wars over the most idiotic things you can think of.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s been in so many that he wouldn’t risk people’s lives like that.”

“I said he would _start_ wars, I didn’t say he would expect other people to fight in them. But anyway, my point is, there are all different sorts of royalty with different duties, and I’m sure you’d find something to do. You’re a scribe, so you already go to all the meetings anyway, and actually pay attention in them, and you read so much that I’m sure you know all the different customs in different places. If I were to do something that has started wars in the past, you could warn me. Keep me from going out of my mind from all the boring things kings have to do. I think you’d be a great prince.”

“Why are we even talking about this?” Ori chuckles. “I’ve got about as much chance to be a prince as I do being an elf.”

“Maybe _now_ you do. But we were talking about if I were king, which is just as impossible. If it weren’t, then you might be prince consort by now. You never know.”

He’s said something wrong. Ori goes quiet and his gaze falls, and his grip on Fíli’s arm loosens just the smallest bit. Fíli falls into a confused silence and diverts his gaze off to the side, staring through the endless chartreuse filter of the trees. He wonders how long this dream is going to last and hope fervently that it doesn’t end yet.

“How long have we been walking, do you think?” Ori asks after a minute. Fíli looks at the sky, but the sun hasn’t moved at all.

“I don’t know. Everything looks pretty much the same.” He pauses. “Do you want to take a break?”

“Yes.”

They wander off of the path and through a break in the trees. Before them is an enormous tree stump—the bark is black and the top a dark, dark grey covered in soft moss. When they sit, their feet barely reach the ground. Ori’s hand rests on the top of the trunk and Fíli hesitantly stretches out his fingers to lace them together with the other dwarf’s. He’s a bit relieved when Ori lets him.

“Did I upset you?” he asks gently.

“No, you didn’t. I’m fine. Can you… can you say it again?” he asks in a small voice.

Fíli bends closer and kisses Ori’s cheek, feeling the scratch of his beard against his face.

“I love you,” he says, quietly this time. Ori nods and lets out a soft sigh. He lets go of Fíli’s hand and wraps an arm around his back. Fíli rests his head against his shoulder and marvels in the peace of it all—the murmuring of the forest around them, the steady sunshine resting on his back, the evenness of Ori’s breath. His entire body feels the rightness of this moment, here with his one among the trees. “Can you say it back?” he asks after a long moment, and feels an acute pain in his heart when Ori shakes his head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Fíli swallows.

“Why not?”

Ori drops his arm and gently urges Fíli to sit up, and slowly touches their foreheads together. He closes his eyes but Fíli doesn’t.

“Because this is just a dream,” he whispers. “A dream can love me, but I can’t love a dream. I’m going to wake up and none of this will be real.”

A tremor runs through Fíli’s body, and he squeezes his eyes tight to keep the tears at bay. He drops his head against Ori’s shoulder. He can’t stop shaking.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Ori asks, his hand touching the back of Fíli’s head. _For dying_ sounds pathetic, so Fíli says nothing. He shakes his head and Ori’s fingers start combing through his hair. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

“I thought I could _help_.”

“You did, dearest.”

“Is it at least a good dream? Or a bad one?”

“Always a good dream.” Ori kisses his temple. “Always.”

He feels Ori’s hand gently pushing his chin up, and Fíli keeps his eyes closed as Ori tenderly kisses him on the cheek and then on the lips. They remain still, barely touching, and in the midst of his pain, Fíli feels _right_.

Slowly, the world slips away and Ori with it. Fíli opens his eyes. He is sitting in an armchair in Ori’s room in Erebor. Ori is awake, lying on the bed, just staring. After a moment he begins to cry. Not great big sobs like last time, just quietly crying and sniffling into his pillow. This is exactly what Fíli didn’t want to happen. Exactly what he’s been trying to avoid for seventeen thrice-damned years. He flings himself away, and tries to bury his sadness in anger.

\---

“Fíli, there you are—”

“Not now, Thorin—Uthran,” Fíli says, trying to rush past his uncle.

“Frerin was looking—”

“I don’t want to talk to Frerin,” he snaps. It’s not Frerin’s fault, he knows that, but it’s easiest to blame him.

It’s the wrong thing to say, though, because Thorin frowns and reaches up to grab Fíli’s arm. They are in the hall outside of Thorin’s chambers. It is deserted—Thorin values quiet, now that he can afford it—and Fíli is grateful, because he can feel a break coming, and with every second he lingers the threat increases.

“Is something the matter?” Thorin asks slowly, eyes searching his face, and Fíli honestly can’t believe he’s just been asked that. A “no” hovers on his lips.

And then he says, “I’m dead.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not _supposed_ to be dead, uncle.” It’s not what he means to say and it’s not what he thought he was angry about, but the words spill out of him. “I can’t just go on pretending I’m happy about it or that this—this _lingering_ is just like living because it’s not! And I can’t keep trying not to think about the fact that I died for _nothing_. I made a stupid mistake because, I don’t know, because I was trying to show what I was capable of? Because I was trying to impress you? I lost everything, and I didn’t even manage to save you or Kíli. I couldn’t even save my little brother. You know that talisman Mother gave him? The one that reads ‘return to me’? They didn’t give one to me. They _trusted_ me to live and I failed them. They—they told me to bring Kíli home safe. I couldn’t do that much! The entire quest I didn’t do anything worth remembering—at least Kíli can say he died helping Tauriel, and you…”

He laughs bitterly.

“You’re _Thorin Oakenshield_. ‘We were leaderless, death and defeat were upon us, and then the young prince faced down the pale orc, wielding nothing but an oaken branch for a shield,’” he recites dutifully, ignoring the way it makes his uncle wince. “You know I learned those words before I learned to walk? I would have given anything just to be _half_ the king you were.”

His voice breaks, and he can’t keep from crying anymore. Fíli presses a hand to his mouth to quiet the rough sobs so he can speak, but it’s difficult. Thorin is patient; he does not try to interrupt. He simply stands there, arms hanging limply at his sides and his gaze dark, as Fíli tries to collect himself.

“I’ve been trying—all these years I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s okay that I didn’t do that, because I must have done something good, right? Something worthy of a prince? But there’s nothing. Nothing. I didn’t do anything meaningful for eighty-two years of my life and then I failed the one chance I had. Even Ori—my own, my one, and I can’t protect him. I knew him for so many years and had no idea. At least Tauriel and Dwalin _know_ that they’re loved, but Ori doesn’t. I can’t—I can’t even tell him I love him without making him cry, and he still doesn’t believe me.” A sob tears through him and he wraps his arms around himself and averts his face. “How can my entire life have been worthless?” he moans. “And h-how am I supposed to get over that? I can’t change it. I can’t make up for it because nothing ever happens here. I can’t. I can’t _fix_ it.”

He can’t manage words anymore. It feels like he is trapped in a cave-in; his entire body shakes and there is a sharp pain in his throat, in his veins, and he can hear nothing but the roar of his own collapsing lungs. Finally he chokes out “Thorin—” and before he can even form the words in his mind, Thorin has pulled Fíli into his arms. He holds him so tightly, one hand pressing Fíli’s face into his shoulder, and Fíli remembers why he has always thought his uncle invincible.

“Fíli,” Thorin murmurs. “Fíli, dashatunai, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Undan, I’m so sorry.”

They stay there for a long time. Every few moments, Thorin says something nonsensical—he’s not very good at comforting people, and Fíli suspects that sometimes he tightens his grip and drops a few more endearments in Khuzdul just to keep his own tears from falling. But he feels safe as a child in his uncle’s embrace, so he doesn’t mind, and eventually he stops crying and just leans against Thorin, exhausted. Thorin heaves a heavy sigh, and releases Fíli partially from his grip, although he keeps one arm around his shoulders.

“Come,” he says somberly, turning towards his chambers. “It is past time for us to talk.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Uthran,” Fíli says tiredly. “I haven’t been taking about this for a reason.”

“Zarinruzud.” Thorin stops in his tracks and cups Fíli’s chin in his hand. “You and your brother are my sister’s sons, the closest and dearest of my kin. It was wrong of me to forget that in life and inexcusable now. I should not have allowed anything to distract me from caring for you.”

“You’ve been reunited with a dozen family members you haven’t seen in over a century,” Fíli protests.

“Aye—but my duties to my parents and my brother are not the same as my duties to you, and I ought not to have forgotten that. I will atone for it now.”

Thorin leads Fíli into his chambers. He, like many dwarves upon entering the halls, had chosen to build his home himself, and the result is very much like the one-story house he had lived in with Dwalin in Ered Luin. There is an entry hall that leads to a study and two bedrooms. On the right is a large kitchen that is hardly used, because Thorin could not cook to save his own life; Fíli has cooked in it, though, and he has always found it well-stocked. (He thinks that Thorin secretly keeps it so in case Dwalin were to arrive suddenly, and want to put it to use.) On the left are a dining room and two sitting rooms. Thorin indicates that Fíli should go through to the smaller of the two, and goes to the kitchen to fetch cups and a pitcher of water.

Fíli settles into a low velvet chair in the sitting room, and accepts the offered drink mutely. His throat is raw and he drinks eagerly, hoping against hope that Thorin will not ask him to speak again. He doesn’t know if he could stand it, and shame is already starting to warm his veins. For a few moments, Thorin does not speak at all.

“Do you remember when you were a child?” he asks slowly. “And Kíli was just a babe? It was exhausting for your parents taking care of two dwarves so young, and sometimes they would send you to me and Dwalin for the night. We did our best to tire you out, and in the evenings Dwalin would make dinner while I gave you a bath and brushed your hair. It was difficult to keep you still. I would try to tell you stories, but I don’t think they were very good.”

“I’m not sure,” Fíli says slowly, trying to throw his mind back that far. “I remember going to your house, of course, but I always remember Kíli being there.”

“He did come, sometimes, once he was older, but for a few years it was only you. You were very young, so it doesn’t surprise me if you’ve forgotten. Years later I used to think maybe we should have done the same thing, made time for each of you separately like that, but it’s difficult with two children so close in age and temperament. We didn’t always know what was best. Now I think it’s past time—sit.”

He indicates a footstool and Fíli sits obediently. Thorin disappears for a moment into the bedroom, and returns with a brush and a small jewelry box. He sits in an armchair just behind Fíli, high enough that he can brush his hair without his arms getting tired, and as he gathers Fíli’s hair in his grip and unties his braids, Fíli is hit with a faint burst of memory. He does remember this—Thorin’s knees on either side of him, his steady hands in his hair, the faint sooty smell of his clothes. It’s the silence that’s the strangest, but that’s how he knows the memory is old. There was never silence once Kíli joined him on these little sleepovers. Not that his brother was the only one to blame for that, he thinks with a half-smile.

Then the silence is broken as Thorin begins to speak in a low voice, and yes, Fíli remembers that too, and how utterly protected he feels when he has his uncle’s full and undivided attention.

Thorin tells him stories. Some of them Fíli has heard before, but never like this. Previously he has been told these stories as things that happened, that are significant, that he must know because they are the history of his people or because they are lessons to learn. Now he is told what it was like to be Thorin Oakenshield during these events. What it feels like to grow up in the shadow of your grandfather, and what it means to see him slip steadily into madness. The sheer terror of seeing your home crushed beneath a dragon’s tread and your people slaughtered as an afterthought. The difficulty of living in exile—not exile as Fíli knows it, but true exile, absent allies or food or dwellings. The _fear_ that comes with leading a people, and the way that fear never leaves you.

In halting, embarrassed words, Thorin tells him about falling in love and feeling guilty for it. It doesn’t feel _right_ , he says, marrying your one when your parents are dead and your people are lost and you ought to be miserable and self-sacrificing. He talks about feeling unworthy, suspicious, betrayed, despairing, useless—all things that Fíli had never imagined Dwalin and Thorin, the most stable couple he knows, could have experienced—and how love does and does not mediate them. He talks about trying to raise Dís without knowing whether he should be parent or brother to her, his relief when she grew into a dwarf strong and clever enough to rival him, and his secret fears that she would someday fall to the weakness of their line. He talks about his failures as a king and a brother. He talks about his successes—how few there were, how difficult to come by, how it seemed as though his friends and subjects exaggerated every one beyond reason. He talks about the pull of madness and darkness, and the different ways they felt, and the dread he felt and still feels, because he does not know where they originate. Which come from his ancestors, which from the ring they wore, which from his own mind? He talks of days on end where he could not force himself out of bed, could see no future in which he was worthy of happiness, could not bear to hear himself be called King or Oakenshield.

He talks of dragon sickness.

Sometimes Fíli is uncomfortable, and he is glad he does not have to look Thorin in the face. Sometimes the things Thorin says chill him, because they are _familiar_ to him, things he has never been able to give a name to. And constantly he can feel his very nature straining with the urge to _protect protect protect_ even though he knows that so many of these wounds are too old and deep for him to heal.

“And then you, my sister-son…” Thorin says hoarsely as he begins to braid small plaits into Fíli’s hair. “You cannot know all that you changed, just by virtue of being born. Suddenly the death of exile saw life, and our line was not ended, and there was someone who would inherit all we could labor for. And you grew with all the best parts of your mothers—hard working, kind, clever, brave, loyal. Our golden child.

“The most difficult thing for me was knowing that you would not have a life of ease. If Ered Luin could be peaceful and prosperous and worthy of our line, if you could live and rule there and be content, if you could grow up never knowing weakness or misery... but it could not be done. There was always poverty and instability, and we _had_ to return to Erebor. We would have to teach you how to survive in a world that has never wanted our existence. Maybe—maybe we pushed too hard. Maybe I told you too many stories of what I had done, what my ancestors had done. I meant to prepare you, and instead you say your life was worthless, you say you did nothing worthy of kingship.” He pauses. “Firstly, that is wrong. You did more than you know. But more importantly… there is something Dwalin tried to tell me many times, and I did not always listen. It is that you do not need to be a great king to be worthy of love. And if someone loves you deeply, from the core of their heart, you do not need to be worthy at all.”

A chill runs up Fíli’s back. He can’t reconcile the words with the war in his mind, but neither can he deny the strong pulse his heart gives when he hears them. He bows his head.

“Thank you, uncle.”

“It is difficult to pass on a lesson you haven’t learned yourself. I wish I had done right by you.”

“You did,” Fíli insists automatically. “Nothing was ever perfect, but we were happy, weren’t we? We were ready. You did all you could.”

“I suppose,” Thorin says doubtfully. “And back to my first point— _you_ did all you could as well. Perhaps you did not see it, but every dwarf in the Blue Mountains admired you, and rightfully so. You fulfilled any duty that was asked of you. You loved your people and were kind to them—you _inspired_ them, earned their love, trusted them. You looked out for your brother, obeyed your mothers, learned from all who attempted to teach you, listened to our histories, learned your craft, fought bravely for your king, hunted and brought back resources for our colony, advised me on matters of policy, and died in service our people. That is more than any prince can be expected to do. It is not fair to you that you did not get to see the rewards of your actions, and it is true that not all of such deeds are worthy of legend, but a happy life is better than a legend.”

Fíli hesitates. He wants to turn around and look at Thorin, but his uncle is still braiding his hair—the constant tugging, as considerate as Thorin tries to be, is starting to pull at his scalp, and he remembers why he never had much patience for this in life.

“Uncle, you’ve spent an hour now telling me how badly you felt about not doing enough for our people. Can we just admit that I did even less, and let me feel bad about it? Or at least not pretend I was Mahal’s gift to dwarves?”

“No, we cannot.”

“Why not?”

“Because it made me miserable for two centuries and I don’t want that for you.”

“It’s the truth. I can accept the truth.”

“It’s the wrong way of looking at the truth. I will allow you to hate yourself only if you agree to hate your brother as well—and mine.”

“ _What_?”

“Frerin and Kíli died young,” Thorin says, and Fíli doesn’t need to turn around to know that a small, triumphant grin is on his face. Bastard. “Kíli’s death did not prevent me from dying, or countless other dwarves. Frerin didn’t manage to kill the commander of the army he was fighting—we might lay the entire blame for the Battle of Five Armies at Frerin’s door, if we like.”

“But it’s not the same thing. Frerin was practically a child,” Fíli argues. “And Kíli saved Tauriel.”

“Do we know that for certain? She’s an accomplished warrior in her own right. She may have been able to save herself, given a few moments. Speaking of which, has Bala done anything useful with her life? _She_ isn’t a warrior. The only exceptional thing would be raising two princes, but since they’re dead—”

“ _Thorin_ ,” Fíli snarls, whipping his head around to find Thorin smirking insufferably at him.

“Yes, Zarinruzud?” he asks. Fíli did not know that his own name could be used as a taunt, but somehow Thorin manages it.

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“I am. You defend your mother and your brother, and I defend my nephew. Nothing you can say will convince me that either of us is wrong in this. Truce?”

“Truce,” Fíli sighs, and he faces away again. “Are you nearly done with my hair?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if I trust you with anything as elaborate as this feels.”

“You wound me, dashatunai.” For a few minutes Thorin continues his work in silence. Then he slips the last bead into place and lets the braid fall from his fingers, but at first neither dwarf moves. “I wish I could soothe your mind about Ori,” he says quietly. “But even I am not foolish enough to pretend I know the ways of makhabbân. You know him best. All you can do is wait, and have faith.”

Fíli nods, resigned to the fact that nothing Thorin can say would lessen the pain in his heart. Perhaps there are parallels to be drawn between his situation and his family members’, but not this. Never this. They cannot know Ori as he does, and they cannot say anything. He leans back against Thorin’s chest (and thinks, absently, on the years when he couldn’t do so without crashing into chain mail) and feels tiredness sweep over his body. He recalls a wisp of memory again, and it makes him smile.

“There was a song…”

“Aye.”

“I don’t remember the words.”

Thorin wraps an arm around Fíli’s shoulder and starts to sing lowly, his voice humming through Fíli’s own body as it fills the small room.

_Oh ro soon shall I see them;_  
_Oh he ro see them oh see them._  
_Oh ro soon shall I see them, the_  
_mist-covered mountains of home._

_There shall I visit the place of my birth_  
_And they'll give me a welcome the warmest on earth_  
_All so loving and kind full of music and mirth,_  
_In the sweet sounding language of home…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dashatunai/dashatunana—sister-son  
> Zarinruzud—steadfast son  
> Gêdulbagd—happy wind  
> akrugadad—honor father (the equivalent of a godfather)  
> akrunaddan/akrunadath—honor children/daughter  
> makhabbûn—lit. “one who has been forged,” short for “one who has been forged with you.” The dwarven equivalent of the word soulmate, as soulmates are thought to be dwarves who were created by Mahal at the same time.
> 
> The song Thorin sings is not a Tolkien song, because I didn’t think either of the Dwarvish ones fit (okay, Far Over the Misty Mountains fit but I’ve ended two fics already with Thorin singing it to Fili, so). It’s a traditional Scottish folk song (full lyrics: http://www.contemplator.com/scotland/mistcvd.html, performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuoAKfPFPmE). One thing I was looking for was a song that could have been taught to Thorin as a child, something he passed on, and the lyrics certainly fit very well—I imagine it as being a song written during the dwarvish exile from Khazad-dum, and the themes obviously continued to be popular…


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italicized lines are taken directly from The Fellowship of the Ring.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Fíli says as Ori sits down to break his fast. He doesn’t know where Dori or Nori is, but Ori doesn’t look for them. “You look well.”

It has been a full year since Fíli’s last visit. He doesn’t know what Ori’s been up to at all. He has no idea if he’s courted anyone or if he’s given up, if he’s happier or sadder since Fíli’s visit. He suspects that some of his relatives might know—might have kept tabs for him, in case something _very_ important happened—but Fíli has, surprisingly enough, kept his resolve. He feels calmer for it, less pained, less doubtful of himself, but it feels _good_ to be in Ori’s presence again.

Ori has gained a bit of weight and grown out his beard longer, though he keeps it carefully braided and pinned so it doesn’t get in the way of his writing. He wears a long velvet ribbon through the main braid of his hair, but no others. His deep brown eyes seem wiser and surer, even as he stares at nothing in particular, and drinks his tea. He is a fully mature dwarf, clever and kind and attractive, and Fíli loves him.

“I needed time to think for myself,” he explains, resting one hand on top of Ori’s. “Really _think_. Not just mope. I tried to think about—about what it means to be me, and who I am and how I want to be now that I’m not alive anymore. It was… difficult. Nothing changes quickly in death. And so much of what I always wanted to be is impossible now—and so much was bound up in you. For most of my life I _wanted_ to be a husband. I _wanted_ to be a father. I wanted to be a king, and I wanted to live in the Lonely Mountain, and you think I would have been a great king, and you’re here in Erebor. And none of that even takes into account the fact that I’m mad about you and I want to be able to live with you. Do you understand? Can you forgive me for not being strong enough to face it all?”

He waits for a response. Ori spreads raspberry jam on a crumpet.

“Anyway. It’s been a good year for me, except for missing you. I spent lots of time with my brother. And my aunt—I have an aunt now, which I’ve never had, so that’s nice—and my grandparents. All four of them. No grandparents at all for my entire life and now suddenly I have _four_. They’re all wonderful, in their way, and I can’t even tell you about all the great-uncles and great-aunts and many-times-great-grandparents. It comes with being royalty, I suppose, because everyone actually keeps _track_ of your lineage. I have no idea why anyone would be interested in their great-great-grandnephew otherwise.” He hesitates. “I—I met your mum, too. I’m sorry if that’s strange. It felt it, a little bit, meeting her without you knowing, but she approached me and I couldn’t turn her away, could I?

“She’s different than I expected. You know, I never realized how much of you must come from _Dori_. She’s almost nothing like you at all, I suppose since she died when you were so young, and a bit more like Nori than I thought. She’s got that same—I don’t know the word for it. _Movement_. Not flightiness, but something like it. She’s the kind that’s happier on the road than anything else, and I think she feels bad about it. About not paying you more attention. She told me she’s visited Nori often, mostly when he was travelling, but she hasn’t visited you more than two or three times all these years. It’s not because she doesn’t _love_ you,” he insists. “She was very clear on that. Just because it’s hard, isn’t it, seeing your child raised by someone else? See them grow into a person that has nothing to do with you…”

Is he imagining it, or does Ori look sadder than he did a moment ago? Ori lifts his hand—dislodging Fíli’s—and flips his braid over his shoulder. One finger toys with the end of it absently as he eats, his eyes fixed on the knots of wood in the table.

“She wears ribbons like you,” Fíli remembers suddenly. “Was that your idea, or Dori’s? Anyway, I told her a lot about you and she appreciated that. You know, I’ve never heard you talk about her? I don’t even know if you _like_ her or not. She’s your mother and it just felt wrong to—dismiss her. I wish… one of the reasons I wish we’d realized we were makhabbân when I was alive is because I wish you would go to my mothers more. I know you’re friends with Dwalin and Gimli, and you’ve _met_ my parents, but it’s not the same. My whole family would be there for you if you wanted them to be, and you’ve only ever had your brothers. You deserve all the love in the world.”

His voice trails off to a whisper on the last sentence, and Fíli knows himself well enough to recognize the tightening in his chest. He clears his throat and stands.

“I think—I think I’d best be going. I’m sorry I didn’t stay long. I’ll be back. I don’t know when, but I promise I won’t stay away for so long again. I really did miss you, Ori.”

Ori stands and leaves the dining room. Fíli stares after him for a moment, bewildered, and then he follows him. Ori is in his study, scurrying amongst his papers. He has a _lot_ of papers. There is a neat pile, as tall as he is, of boxes containing all his notes and drafts and drawings. He curses to himself as he flips through a box, sets it aside, and picks up another.

“ _Ah_ ,” he says with satisfaction this time, although he doesn’t immediately find the exact paper he is looking for. After a few more moments of shuffling, he draws out a single sheet, and Fíli walks around the room so he can peer over his shoulder.

“Is that me?” he asks, startled.

It’s a drawing of two dwarves sitting side by side, one staring up from the paper and the other looking away. Fíli realizes, after a moment of peering at it, that this must be the portrait Ori told him about—Fíli and Thorin in Laketown. Thorin’s hair is drawn in darker, and he has a heavier brow, which is the only thing that distinguishes them at first, but the more Fíli looks the more he sees. Thorin’s shoulders are thrown back a bit more, with the ease of one who has been carrying a heavy weight so long that he has learned how to adjust. Fíli himself, however, has a smile on his face, an easy, light-hearted smile that doesn’t fit with his miserable memories of Laketown. Ori’s made him look more put-together, too, he realizes with a smirk as he notices the neatly plaited and bound braids of the portrait.

Ori looks at it for a moment and then sets it back down on his desk, and as he does, Fíli can see the caption. It’s in ink, unlike the drawing—written after his death. _Thorin, King Under the Mountain, and Crown Prince Fíli, son of Dís. May the Maker keep them in love and remembrance._

“I didn’t make you a necklace,” Fíli says guiltily. “I can, if you still want. I’m sure there are plenty of opals in the halls—has the fashion changed in Erebor yet?”

“May the Maker keep them in love and remembrance,” Ori mutters, and Fíli nearly jumps out of his skin. Ori takes a deep breath. “I don’t… I don’t pray much. Not on my own like this. But I think about them a lot in the mornings, especially Fíli, and I wanted to ask… Mahal above, please, keep him in love and remembrance and—joy. Joyfulness. I like to think about him like this, like he knew what was right, what he had to do, but that it was never a heavy burden to him. He was always making people smile so it seems right to see him smile, too. I hope that he has found peace in your halls, and I hope that he knows he was loved. Still is loved.” He clears his throat and adds, in a slightly guiltier voice, “By many of us. Please make sure he knows that. Kana.”

He stands and starts walking back to the kitchen, and Fíli stares after him in hopeless adoration.

“I love you,” he calls. “You—you _wonderful idiot_. Have you realized yet? It’s not normal for an infatuation to last twenty years and _death_. And I love you back.”

He rolls his eyes and smiles as he returns to the halls of Mandos.

\---

Fíli and Kíli are sitting back to back in the grass, staring up at the sky. It’s night—although night doesn’t feel the same, and they still don’t quite understand how time _works_ here—and there are strange constellations in the sky. They look at the skies and smoke, and occasionally break the silence with a comment on nothing at all.

“Thorin the first challenged Lhis to another arm-wrestling bought today.”

“ _Again_? He’s never won.”

“And he didn’t today, either. It’s getting to be pathetic, really. I couldn’t even win any money this time because no one was taking bets. Hey, look at those stars there—don’t they look like the Ring of Durin?”

“It’s not, though.”

“I _know_ , Fíli, I’m just saying they look just like the others.”

“Na, stars all look the same.”                    

“No they don’t. Some are brighter than others, and they’re different sizes and colors.”

“Again with the Elvish nonsense.”

“Oh, shut it.”

Fíli smiles to himself and blows a smoke ring. It’s been decades since they arrived here, and he knows he’s changed. He knows his brother has, too. But this hasn’t changed, and he feels inexplicably blessed right now.

“Gêdulbagd?” he says, and Kíli groans.

“You only call me that when you’re going to be sentimental.”

“Fine then, I won’t say anything.”

“No, no, go ahead.”

“Oh no, I know how you feel about _sentiment_. It’s not like you cry on cue or anything.”

“I do not!”

“Over Tauriel, over newborn animals, over a really nice bow, over _stars_ —”

“Say what you were going to say or I’m going to cry over your second funeral in a moment.”

“All right, all right. I was just going to say you’re a good brother. You’re not as much of a prat as you were when we were kids.”

“Aw. Likewise.”

“Thanks.”

After a moment, Kíli twists his body and lies down, so Fíli’s head ends up pillowed on his brother’s stomach. He stretches out comfortably, shivering at the coolness of the dirt beneath him, and closes his eyes.

“I wonder what’s the proper wedding etiquette in death,” Kíli comments absently. “Is it appropriate to send Mahal an invitation?”

“It would make the blessings part awkward,” Fíli chuckles. “What if you’re in the middle of saying, I don’t know, ‘Mahal bless this couple with happiness’ and you look over and he just shakes his head?”

They both burst into giggles at that, and then Fíli groans.

“Durin’s beard, you realize you’re going to have a half- _Elvish_ wedding? That’s going to be a nightmare.”

“At least two more gods to invite.”

“And the _guests_ , na. You’re going to have a huge party of elves and dwarves and you’ll have to keep them from killing each other.”

“No, I won’t. I’m not supposed to deal with that sort of thing at my own wedding—that’s _your_ job. And besides, there’s no harm in it, is there? They can’t really kill each other because they’ll all be dead already. And you know, I always like any kind of celebration to have a few fights or shouting matches. It keeps things interesting.”

“I’m so glad Tauriel’s immortal, because no offense but I’m not really looking forward to that.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to get used to the idea. Meanwhile you and Ori will probably have a boring little cozy wedding with no fights and lots of teary speeches from Thorin and Frerin and Dori. Dull.”

“And romantic.”

“ _If_ he says yes.”

“You’re an ass,” Fíli laughs, and he doesn’t need to look up to know that Kíli is grinning.

“I love you, too, Zarinruzud.”

\---

Over the next few decades, Fíli visits Ori regularly every three months or so, usually in day-long visits that also include a few hours spent with his parents, cousins, or members of the company. It is healthier, he thinks, than when he used to visit every week. He still gets to see Ori teach Bom how to write, and Gimli have his first adolescent love affair (Gloin alternates constantly between pride and sheer terror), and Tauriel win a drinking contest against Dís at Dwalin’s two hundred and tenth birthday, but without any of the misery such sights had once produced. The downside to this schedule, however, is that sometimes things of monumental importance happen in the three-month interval, and he drops into a conversation with no idea of what’s going on.

This is the case one evening when he finds himself in a tavern crowded with boisterous dwarves, seated at a table with Ori, Nali, and Gimli, all of whom look more serious than the crowd around them.

“I can’t,” Gimli is saying gloomily. “I’ve _just_ signed a contract with Zingh’s crew, doing renovations in the old south corridor. I might come join you in a few years, but I can’t break my first major contract.”

“Ori, what about you?” Nali says.

They’re having dinner, and Ori delays by stuffing a piece of ham in his mouth and chewing as slowly as possible, staring intently at his plate.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “The thing is, it’s Dori. His arthritis has gotten really bad and he couldn’t make the trip, and he needs help around here now, too. What if his hands get worse, and he can’t work? Our savings can’t last forever, and I don’t trust receiving messages over that great a distance—”

“Haven’t you been using that excuse since we were kids?” Gimli says, raising his bushy eyebrows in amusement. “‘I can’t skip lessons today, my brother wants me to do well. Can’t play king of the mountain, need to help my brother with the laundry…’”

“Well it’s the _truth_ ,” Ori snaps, and he tears his bread in two pieces for emphasis. “It’s different for you—for both of you. My family never had much of anything growing up, and Dori sacrificed a lot for me. He didn’t have to. And he’s never made me feel guilty about it, even, so it’s only fair that I look after him, too. Bad enough I ran off the first time.”

“But look how well _that_ turned out,” Nali persists, gesturing around them. “You’re always saying you like watching history happen, don’t you? People are going to be reading your account about reclaiming Erebor for centuries. Just imagine how long they’ll read your account about reclaiming Khazad-dum.”

“ _Moria_?” Fíli yelps. “You’re going to _Moria_? Durin’s beard, whose idea was that?”

“Oh, well done,” Ori says drily. “Pandering to my ego. That’s a good try.”

Gimli roars with laughter and Nali looks mildly embarrassed, but she doesn’t give up.

“I’m just saying… Nori’s been home for six months now, yeah? Looking after Dori? They’re brothers just as much as you and Dori are, and he can pull his own weight, too. You’re young still, you’re allowed to go off on your own if you want. And being part of the company meant so much to you; I know Balin’s talked to you about it personally. He wants you to come, doesn’t he?”

“Yes…”

“He’s handpicked you, just like Thorin did, and you were always so _proud_ of that. I suppose I just don’t understand why you jumped at that chance but not this one. It’s safer—he’s done the research, and between Azanulbizar and the Battle of Five Armies, there can’t be many goblins left. And no dragons whatsoever.”

Ori purses his lips. Fíli looks at his face, trying to sort out the own roaring feelings in his heart. He’s a Longbeard. Yearning for Khazad-dum is in his blood, and there is no doubt in his mind that, if he were alive and his king asked him to reclaim their ancient seat, he would lead the charge. But this… this doesn’t feel like that. The way the three dwarves speak, so casually, it doesn’t sound like a large expedition. It doesn’t sound like something their king has decided, and it does not sound anything like the prophecy of their return to Khazad-dum.

And he doesn’t like the idea of Ori going without him.

“Why do _you_ want to go?” Ori says, changing the subject. “It doesn’t sound like your area at all.”

Nali, unexpectedly, turns bright red, and Fíli frowns. Nali is engaged, and she and Ori have been friends for almost three decades at this point—she _can’t_ still hold a torch, can he? (Of course, Fíli himself has held a torch for Ori for going on five decades now without encouragement, but that’s a different matter entirely.) Then Nali glances at both Ori and Gimli, and the words burst from her.

“Just say it, why don’t you? It’s because I didn’t volunteer for Thorin, and you think that makes me a coward—both of you.”

“Come off it—”

“Nali, that’s not—”

“Yes, it is. It was always the four of us, Gimli, remember? You, me, Fíli and Kíli. And the three of you all wanted to go off and fight a dragon. You practically _begged_ Thorin to take you, and Fíli and Kíli were always trying to get me to come too, but I said no, I didn’t see the point, I didn’t think it could be done, I didn’t want to die—I was a coward, and they died as heroes. _You_ at least could say you weren’t allowed to come. And you always looked up to them, didn’t you?” she demands of Ori, whose eyes flicker up to meet hers and then down at the table again. Ori and Gimli have both grown very, very quiet. “Half the time you were too nervous to talk to the four of us, but you hung around plenty, and when you got the chance to go for Erebor, you took it. Those years when the company was gone were the _worst_ years of my life. I spent the entire time wondering if you all were dead, if I should have gone with you—I didn’t know how to fight! I had no idea what I would have done to help you, but I kept thinking I could have done something—and then we got a raven from Thorin saying the mountain had been captured and the entire settlement was mad with happiness. I thought, _Durin’s beard, they’ve done it. I never thought they could do it, maybe I should have gone, too_ …. And a week later we get another raven from Dain saying Thorin and Fíli and Kíli are dead. I’m torn between thinking _maybe I should have gone_ and _thank the Maker I didn’t go_ , but how do you say I told you so to your best friends when they’re dead?”

There is a long pause. The room is still loud with the conversation of the dwarves around them, but their table is dead silent, until Fíli reaches out and puts his hand on Nali’s forearm.

“I’m sorry, Nali,” he says quietly. “I never—I never thought… I never thought how it would feel for you. Us being gone. But I _never_ thought you were a coward. I swear, not once. You were a good friend, and you’re a good dwarf.”

“So,” Nali says, self-consciously tugging at her beard. “I’m not going to let the opportunity pass me by again, and Frar feels the same way. I’m going to go, and do my bit. We all know _they_ would have gone.”

Gimli mutters an agreement, but Ori doesn’t say anything. He looks deep in thought, as Gimli and Nali continue to discuss the expedition to Moria. Fíli was right—Dain doesn’t approve. It’s a small group being led by Balin. Most of the company isn’t going, for one reason or another. Fíli half-listens, because he knows this will be important information for the dwarves in the Halls, but he also keeps a careful eye on Ori. After maybe half an hour or so, Ori says farewell and returns to the home he still shares with his brothers. Dori and Nori are in the sitting room, squabbling—but Fíli knows them well enough to identify it as happy squabbling, and Ori only looks in with a fond smile to say good night.

“Oi, Ori,” Nori says, catching Ori at his bedroom door. He lowers his voice. “Have they made their decisions yet?”

“Nali is going. Gimli can’t, but he might join in a few years.”

“Right. Listen—whatever you do, do it because you want to, eh? Don’t worry about me and Dori.”

“How can I _not_?”

Nori grins and tweaks his nose.

“You’re a sweet lad. Always have been. But really, I’ve gotten into my fair share of trouble, and so has Dori, much as he tries to deny it. He was as wild as I was at one point.”

“He was _not_ ,” Ori laughs, because it’s a blatant lie.

“He was at least _half_ as wild as I was. Anyway, my point is, we both had our time to be selfish. Dori made up for it by taking care of you, and you’ve been unselfish just about your whole life up until this point. It’s my turn to do my bit. You’re a grown dwarf, and a whip-smart one, and if you want to run off into the blue, go for it. You’ve earned it—and Dori agrees with me on that.”

Ori stares at Nori for a few moments, and then he launches himself into a hug.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

“Don’t worry about it, na.”

Ori goes into his bedroom, and Fíli follows him and flops into an armchair he has long since claimed as his own.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

But Ori doesn’t give him a single hint. He doesn’t pray, mutter to himself, pull out trinkets from the quest, or anything at all helpful. He just dresses for bed and lies down, and Fíli closes his eyes and disappears just before he falls asleep.

\---

“Kíli!” he calls, spotting his brother in the hallway. He jogs up to his side and Kíli greets him with a nod. “Have you heard about Balin reclaiming—”

“THAT FILTHY _PIT_ HAS CLAIMED TOO MANY DWARVEN LIVES ALREADY!”

“HOW _DARE_ YOU SPEAK OF OUR HOMELAND IN SUCH A WAY?”

“I’ve heard,” Kíli says drily.

“Durin’s balls,” Fíli breathes. “Is that—is Frerin shouting at _Narvi_?”

“Yep.”

The hall is a bustle of activity, and dwarves are growling and shouting at each other all over the place, but at the center of it all is a small space where Frerin, whom Fíli has never seen this angry, bellowing at a short dwarf woman with tattoos covering most of her exposed skin, bellowing just as ferociously back. Lilah is hovering at Frerin’s shoulder anxiously, and Fíli can spot other family members in the crowd; Thror is having a wistful conversation with his seven-times-great-grandfather Nain, and Thorin is muttering with Fundin, Balin and Dwalin’s mother.

“What’s the consensus?” he asks Kíli.

“Frerin is unequivocally against, obviously—I hadn’t realized he felt so strongly, even after all these years. He always seemed so collected about it, don’t you think?”

“I don’t blame him. What about the rest of the family?”

“Frerin got Thror to admit it’s a bad idea, but you can tell he approves at least a little bit. Thorin _can’t_ oppose it without looking like a massive hypocrite. Lhis and both our Longbeard grandparents are against it. Fundin is proud, but cautious. Our other grandparents don’t think it’s a good idea but also don’t know much about it, you know? It’s a Longbeard thing, so they’re staying out of it. As for the rest, _all_ of the dwarves from Khazad-dum are in favor, as far as I know, and those in exile are pretty much divided. What about the living?”

“Dori and Bombur physically can’t, and Bifur mentally can’t, so Bofur’s staying, and it looks like Nori’s staying to care for Dori. Gloin’s investing but he doesn’t want to uproot his family, and Gimli has obligations in Erebor for now. Óin is going. Nali and her fiancée are going. Mum and Amad think they’re too old to be starting over for what, the fourth and third time, respectively? And Dwalin won’t.”

“Dwalin won’t?”

“No.”

“Tired of adventuring?”

“Or unwilling to leave Thorin behind.”

“And Ori?” Kíli asks after a pause.

“Undecided.”

“Hm.”

They both watch the fight between Frerin and Narvi for a few minutes longer. It is painful to watch, because both make compelling arguments, and they both _care_ so much. Narvi fights for her home, which she spent all of her life serving. Frerin fights so that his death can have meaning. They shout themselves hoarse, until finally Lilah steps in between them.

“Enough,” she says, her deep voice rumbling through the hall. “Enough. There is no end to this argument; there is nothing that can be done about it except exhaust you both. The living must make this decision, and shouting will not change their minds.”

Narvi accepts this proclamation with a good deal of grumbling, but Frerin’s eyes suddenly start raking the crowd. He finds Fíli and makes eye contact with him, and Fíli mutters a curse.

\---

“ _Please_ , Fíli—”

“I don’t know if I _can_ ,” Fíli says, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve only visited him twice, you know—”

“But you’ve only tried twice. That’s more than the rest of us can do. Even Thorin, he’s been trying to visit Dwalin for fifty years and he’s only managed it three times, with about two hundred failed attempts. I don’t know if it’s you or Ori, but clearly _something_ works.”

“Leave him be, uncle,” Kíli says firmly. The three of them are tucked in an alcove in the hallway, away from the rumble of an argument that will probably last for the next ten years. Fíli leans against the cool grey stone and tries to sort out the mess of his thoughts. “There’s a good reason Fíli _doesn’t_ visit Ori in his dreams, and you know it.”

“What reason can be more important than saving his life?” Frerin insists. “And the lives of all those who would go with Balin? _If_ Moria is to be retaken, it is to be under the reign of Durin VII. Balin knows this, or at least he should. It is only his love for Thorin that makes him foolhardy, but he relies on Ori’s guidance, and Ori knows many of the dwarves going. If he can persuade them that Moria is too dangerous a destination…”

“Ori has his own opinion,” Fíli says, not meeting his uncle’s eyes. “I’m not sure what that is—but if he wants to go to Moria, I’m not sure if I _can_ stop him from going. Not without lying about who I am or what I know. And, honestly, I’m not entirely confident that I even want to try.”

His eyes flicker up briefly to meet Frerin’s face, and he cringes at the betrayal he sees there.

“You—you would see him die young? When it is in your power to prevent it?”

“You know me better than that,” Fíli says quietly. “I do not want to. But Ori has spent most of his life thinking about other people. It’s in his nature. He might make this journey not because he believes in the cause, but because he needs to for himself—because he needs to do something other than follow his brothers, pursue a dream that isn’t the sensible one. If he does so, he will do it with full knowledge of the danger, and stopping him just because I don’t want him to go—and _I don’t want him to go_ —would be cruel.”

Frerin searches his face for a moment, and then he sighs and looks away. It’s difficult, sometimes, to remember that Frerin was so young when he died, because he’s had plenty of time to mature—but now, he looks his physical age. And he looks scared.

“I know I’m making a fool of myself,” he says in a low voice. “But… it was bad enough making it through that _slaughter_ once. Witnessing it happen again—I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re not a fool, uncle,” Kíli says, and almost in unison he and Fíli step forward and overwhelm him in a hug. “You’re just… part of the family. Worrying over things we can’t fix is what we _do_. And you’re stronger than you know.”

“I suppose,” Frerin says, his voice muffled. “Fíli… could you at least think about it?”

“I will,” Fíli promises, and Frerin squeezes him tighter in thanks.

\---

Fíli thinks about it for all that day and most of the next morning, and he still can’t come up with a satisfactory conclusion. He doesn’t know if this expedition will end in victory or tragedy. He doesn’t know how to ensure the former. He doesn’t know if Ori will be able to handle whatever happens. He doesn’t know whether he has the right to ask Ori to stay. He has absolutely no idea what to say.

But then, suddenly, he has the urge to visit Ori. It’s a dull ache that begins in his stomach, and he can’t help but feel that he must obey—he _needs_ to be with Ori right now. He is in the middle of chopping carrots for dinner that night, but he scribbles a note to Kíli and heads down to the caves. This time he doesn’t bother to go down to his; he ducks into a big, open cavern riddled with stalagmites and closes his eyes.

He opens them in Ori’s room in Erebor, and looks toward the bed—but Ori isn’t there.

“Fíli?” a voice asks tentatively, and Fíli spins around to see Ori standing by his armchair, looking at him skeptically.

“Hello, darling,” he says with a smile, stepping closer. He always forgets what a delight it is to be around Ori, and he sweeps him into a hug without thinking about it. Ori hugs him back and all the breath is pushed out of his lungs.

“It worked!” Ori says with a grin as he pulls back and kisses Fíli’s cheek.

“Hm?”

The other dwarf holds out his hand and uncurls his fingers, revealing two rough stones, cut with runes. Fíli looks at them quizzically.

“Is that—amethyst?”

“And aquamarine. Óin gave them to me. Amethyst for dreams, and aquamarine for memory. I went to him today because—because I don’t know what I should do, and talking to you always helps me sort it out. All I wanted was something to help me think clearer, but he said if he gave me the stones, and taught me this little prayer to say over them, then I could actually control the path of my dreams. I could really bring you here—and it worked. Here you are.”

“Here I am,” Fíli echoes, bewildered because he has never spent a moment of his time considering the possibility that his cousin’s backwoods spiritual rituals might actually _work_. “What did you want to talk about? Moria?”

“Moria,” Ori confirms with a sigh, falling into his armchair. Fíli sits on the bed and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Of course you already know—it’s all anyone’s been talking about for days. I can’t—I can’t keep everything straight in my head. I want to go, but I want to stay, but I don’t…”

“Take a moment,” Fíli suggests. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I don’t know if all my reasons are good.”

“Right. Let’s start at the beginning, then: why do you want to go?”

Ori doesn’t answer at first. He thinks on it, biting the corner of his lip, and then glances at the door to his bedroom.

“Can we go out there?” he says abruptly, standing, and Fíli follows him.

“Sure.”

They go out into a sitting room. Ori sits on a little sofa meant for two, patting the seat next to him, and then pushes Fíli over so they’re both reclining, comfortably wrapped up in each other. Fíli, who has no say in the process whatsoever, laughs, and Ori grins and cuddles closer into his chest.

“That’s better,” he says, satisfied as a cat with cream.

“Much,” Fíli agrees. “Now—Moria?”

“Do you remember when we’d first started out for Erebor?” Ori says thoughtfully. “You and Kíli asked me and Dori why we’d decided to come in the first place, and Dori asked you in return. _You_ said it was because Thorin had raised you with dreams of Erebor, Kíli said the Blue Mountains weren’t a proper home, Dori said he was looking after me, and I…”

“Lied,” Fíli finished promptly. “You said something about following Nori and something about loyalty to the king or whatever. But you were embarrassed and blustery about the whole thing, we could all tell.”

“Yes, well. I thought the real answer sounded ridiculous. The honest truth is—I just wanted an _adventure_. I’ve spent my whole life reading about great things other people have done, and I don’t even care about doing great things myself, but just _seeing_ them. Meeting kings, fighting in battles, traveling through distant lands… I can’t even describe the sense of wonder it gives me. There’s a whole world out there and more people than I could ever imagine, and being able to explore it is… it’s a gift, a true gift. I’m so honored to have been a part of the company, and to write down our stories knowing that in three hundred years someone like me will read them and know they mattered. Is that—it’s not ridiculous, is it?”

“It’s not,” Fíli says quietly. The awe in Ori’s voice swells his heart, and he presses a kiss to the hollow of Ori’s neck. “Not at all.”

“And, you know, I can be _really useful_ now. I can beat anyone in the mountain with a slingshot, and many with an axe, and I can write shorthand—that doesn’t sound like much, but I promise you, in a thousand years people will be very grateful that there’s someone recording every detail of the reclamation of Khazad-dum. And Balin trusts me, and my brothers gave me their blessings to go if I want to… and there’s just so little to keep me here,” he confesses, squirming uncomfortably. “I hate to say it, I do, but—my career has been a bit dull for the past six or seven years now, and I really _don’t_ think I’m going to marry anyone in Erebor if I’m ever going to marry at all. The only thing that makes me pause is my friends and my family. Dori, Nori, Bom, Dwalin, Gimli, the company…. But is that worth just drifting along here for the rest of my life? I’m _young_ still. I haven’t gotten my share of adventures in yet. They all did—okay, not Gimli or Bom, but the rest of them, they’ve travelled plenty more than I have. I could always go to this new settlement for a few years, maybe even a few decades, and come back when I’m ready to settle down again. It’s not unheard of.”

“You could,” Fíli says encouragingly. His hand absently rubs up and down Ori’s arm as he contemplates the ceiling—his vision obscured just slightly by a tuft of red-brown hair. “The only thing is—sorry, never mind, go on.”

“No, I’m just thinking out loud. Go ahead, what is it?”

“The only thing is, it would _definitely_ be decades, Ori. I mean, we’re not talking about heading off to the Iron Hills for a little while. This is halfway back to Ered Luin, and it’s going to involve years of repairs and excavating, not to mention goblin raids… And there—well, I can think of one fairly important reason for _not_ going.”

“Which is?” Ori asks, wrapping one of Fíli’s braids around his finger.

“You could die.”

“Oh,” Ori says dismissively. “I’m not really afraid of that.”

“You’re not?” Fíli says. He tries to keep his voice neutral, but he is startled and it must bleed through a little; Ori glances up and pecks him lightly on the lips.

“No. I was, for a while, but then we left the goblin tunnels and Dori and I fell…” Fíli remembers hearing Ori scream in the back of his mind—a quiet sound, compared to the more immediate snarling of wargs—and his heart clenches. Ori shrugs. “I can’t explain it. It was more the shock than anything that I felt, but I wasn’t really afraid of _death_. Not until we were back on the ground and I saw how badly shaken Nori was. _That_ made me feel bad. And that’s what worries me the most, leaving my brothers. Dori’s approaching two hundred now, and he needs help around the house. Nori says he will, and so far they’ve been all right, but… Nori’s never been very good with staying in one place.”

“Is that fair?” Fíli suggests gently, and Ori sighs.

“No, it’s not. He’s not exactly _young_ himself anymore, and he and Dori have been getting on much better than they did when I was a child… but still, he’s never really wanted to be a caretaker. Dori and I are much better at it. And Dori— _how_ could I leave Dori? He’s raised me since our mother died. I’ve never been apart from him, and now that he needs me…”

“I can tell you one thing, though,” Fíli says with a smile. His hand drifts further along Ori’s back, and he trails his fingers up and down his long, thick braid. “You’re a younger brother, so you wouldn’t know this—but the whole ‘I’m doing this because my brother needs me’ bit? It’s only maybe _half_ true. The other half is ‘I’m doing this because it’s something to do and that keeps me from panicking.’ Especially when you’ve just been through something horrible—like losing your mother. Or… losing everything,” he thinks, swallowing. “It’s a _relief_ to be able to comfort somebody else, because then you don’t have to admit that you need comfort, too. So when you say ‘now he needs me’—really, he’s always needed you. And you’ve always been there for him.”

His words seem to comfort Ori, who hums and closes his eyes with a faint sigh. Fíli thinks back to his uncle’s request, but still the words hesitate on his lips. So far he has given Ori reasons to stay and reasons to leave—he doesn’t know if he’s actually said anything to convince him either way. Does he want to? He wants Ori to be _happy_ , he thinks firmly as Ori burrows closer to him. That’s all he’s ever wanted. Even if that meant watching him forget about Fíli, if it meant him marrying someone else… if it means him dying in the pursuit of something he loves?

“I wish I were brave like you,” Ori mumbles. “Because that’s part of it too, you know. Leaving my home and my brothers both at once. It scares me to death, even though I—I think I’ve known for days now that that’s what I want.”

“Ori…” Fíli whispers. “Ori, darling, for years I’ve been wishing _I_ could be as brave as _you_.”

“Stop,” Ori says with a frown, tugging on Fíli’s braids. “Lying doesn’t make me feel better.”

“It’s not a lie, it’s the absolute truth. Dear heart, did you happen to notice the fact that I brought an armory with me on the quest for Erebor, and you brought a single slingshot?”

“Because I couldn’t fight with anything else!”

“You joined a quest to _slay a dragon_ without knowing how to fight, and don’t see how that’s brave? Fine then, how about the fact that you joined every single battle we ever fought, even when you could have held back? You battled trolls and goblins and _massive_ spiders—you earned Dwalin’s respect, and that’s not exactly the easiest thing to do. I don’t think Bard even managed it until a few decades ago. Not to mention that you’re naturally as shy as anything but you still manage to speak up amongst kings and princes as often as you do—something you complimented _me_ for doing last time we spoke, remember?”

“That was different,” Ori protests. His cheeks are glowing pink.

“How?” He waits for Ori to come up with an answer, but none is forthcoming. “Not to mention your attacks—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Ori groans, hiding his face in Fíli’s shoulder. “I hate them. I’ve had them since I was a child and it’s so embarrassing but I just can’t get rid of them. It’s pathetic.”

“It’s not,” Fíli says, gently breaking Ori’s grip on his sleeve so he can lace their fingers together. “It’s really not, Ori. You know Thorin had to deal with something similar, when he was alive? He told me about it. It wasn’t the same, but sometimes he just—couldn’t get control of his mind. Despair would take over everything, or he couldn’t stop thinking about Azanulbizar. I always thought he was the strongest person I knew, and knowing that, knowing how much he had to _fight_ just to exist some days—he was ashamed of it, and it only made me more convinced. He’s my uncle and there’s nothing that can change how I see him. And you… I’ve seen how difficult they are for you. But they’ve never _stopped_ you, have they? You just pick yourself up again and keep going on. That makes you brave. And it’s all right to be afraid of leaving everything you know at once. _Everybody_ is. Thorin was. Kíli and I were. We managed to get through it because we weren’t _entirely_ alone, and you won’t be either. You’ll have Óin and Balin, and Nali, and me. You’ll always, always have me,” he swears, pressing a kiss to the side of Ori’s head.

Ori is silent for a long moment, staring at their locked fingers.

“You think I should go?” he asks finally.

“No,” Fíli murmurs. “No, I lost too many members of my family to Azanulbizar to think that—but I want you to be happy, and I think you are strong enough and wise enough to make this decision yourself.”

“If you had the choice to do it all again…” Ori says slowly, his thumb brushing back and forth over Fíli’s. “Every moment of it, from knocking on Bilbo’s door to—to mounting Ravenhill… would you?”

“Yes,” Fíli whispers.

There is not a second of hesitation in his voice, and Ori looks up at him. His eyes are solemn and thoughtful, and Fíli realizes with a smile that he has memorized the placement of each freckle on Ori’s face. He lets his eyes drift closed and touches their forehead together, letting out a deep sigh of contentment.

“I love you,” Ori says.

“I thought—I thought you couldn’t say that to a dream,” Fíli says, swallowing thickly.

“I’ve changed my mind. What does it matter that it’s a dream—it’s true, isn’t it?” Ori says simply. “I’ve been in love with Fíli for years. After all this time, what does it matter if I say it or not?”

“Zarinruzud.”

“What?”

“Zarinruzud. That’s my name. You can ask my mothers if you like, or Dwalin.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Ori chuckles. “I’m not going to walk up to a princess and ask what her fifty-years-dead son’s name was, just because he told me to in a _dream_. She’d think I was mad.”

“Just because this is a dream, it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“We’ll see…. Will it help me find you in the next world? Knowing your name?”

“I’ll find you anyway.”

“Well, if you need any help—ask for Azagâl.”

“Azagâl,” Fíli murmurs, tasting the word on his tongue. It fits, and he tilts his head closer to press his lips briefly to Ori’s. “I love you, too,” he says.

He can’t think of anything more important to say, so he keeps silent. He thinks about the warmth that touches him everywhere his body meets Ori’s, and the solid feel of his fingers. After a moment he wiggles down, shoving his feet against the very edge of the couch, so he can rest his head against Ori’s chest and listen to the steady rise and fall of his lungs, and beneath that the soft pulse of his heart. Ori strokes his hair and Fíli closes his eyes, trying to remember the last time he felt this kind of peace.

“How long has it been?” he asks. Time, which passes strangely in death, does not pass at all in dreams.

“I don’t know. It always seems too short, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But—you said you would stay with me, didn’t you? Even after this is over?”

“I will.”

 

 

\---

 

 

 _Doom, doom_ go the drums in the deep.

The stone walls around them reverberate with the shouts of panicked dwarves yelling instructions at each other, running around in armor that clanked and added to the cacophony, slamming into the doors as they tried to brace it. Fíli can feel his heart beating wildly in his throat and his every instinct screams at him to help—to grab a sword, to urge his people on, to do something—but instead he kneels beside Ori, whose face is chalky white as his hand races over the page of his book.

 _We cannot get out. We cannot get out_.

“Ori, listen to me,” Fíli begs. “It’s all right—it’s all right, you’re going to be fine. You’ve done what you set out to do, and it’s all going to be all right. Don’t be frightened, darling.”

… _and Nali fell bravely_. Tears prick at Ori’s eyes and he glances at the door. His hand pauses for half a second as a terrible shriek pierces the riotous sound. The goblins are close, and there are more of them before. Even Fíli cannot tell how many—he has been trying desperately these past few days to learn their numbers, their hiding places, any secret exit that may help the remaining dwarves, but he has failed. All of them have underestimated the depths of the mines and the extent to which the goblins have infested them. Fíli seizes Ori’s arm and tries to meet his eyes.

“Don’t look at them. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters—you came to write your book. Write it down, Ori.”

_The pool is up to the wall at West-gate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin—we cannot get out._

“For Durin’s sake, Ori, help us!” one of the dwarves bellows, and Fíli swears blisteringly at him.

But Ori can hold his own—he looks up with a glare and snaps, “Why? Nothing you do will stop death—you buy us five minutes, no longer, and in those five minutes _I_ am going to make sure that we will not be forgotten. Our dead _will not_ be forgotten.”

_The end comes soon._

_Doom, doom_ , sound the drums.

_We hear drums, drums in the deep._

The dwarves shout as one as something smashes into the doors, knocking some of them back. Fíli spares them only a glance, and then he turns back to Ori and presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I’m here, Ori, I’ll be right here, I swear it—you’re so brave. You’ll be all right.”

_They are coming._

Ori shuts the book and stands. He shoves it hastily into a slot in the wall and seizes his axe, hefting it with both hands. His fingers are still splattered with ink and he is still wearing a ribbon in his braid, and he is going to die. For a split second, Fíli stares into Ori’s eyes and thinks that, maybe, Ori is staring back—but then his gaze turns toward the door.

“Open the gate!” he shouts. Heads turn to stare at him, mouths gaping, and he hefts his axe higher. “We will not die cowering,” he snarls. “We die on our feet, and our enemy will know the taste of dwarvish iron— _open the gate_!”

Fíli, for one hysterical moment, feels like laughing—because Ori doesn’t think he is prince material. The dwarves look at Ori, and look at each other, and nod.

 _Doom, doom_.

With lightning speed, they dissemble the barricade, and it takes the combined effort of four dwarves to wrench the doors open. The goblins swarm in, moonlight glinting off their crude weapons and bared teeth. They have the advantage of numbers and agility, but Fíli has seen his people fight, and he knows what they can withstand. There are roars of “ _Baruk khazad_!” from every side, and the room echoes with the sound of axes slicing flesh and hammers crunching bone. He stands against the wall, next to the slot containing Ori’s book, and stares at the battle with a sick feeling in his stomach. His hands itch for a sword; his throat aches to call for a retreat. One by one, dwarves fall, and red blood mixes with black on the stone floor.

Ori wields his axe well; he stands with his back against Balin’s great white tomb, and around him lie the scattered corpses of dead goblins. Blood stains his hands and his eyes are alert, keeping track of every enemy that approaches him, and his arms swing back and forth methodically, like he was born with axe in hand—and Fíli looks away. He can’t watch this. He _can’t_.

Suddenly, he hears a cry—a low, broken cry that tears through the air, and he feels a piercing pain in his own chest. Fíli gasps and falls to his knees, arms wrapped tight around his torso. His eyes are squeezed shut, tearing up at the pain, and he can’t look around him but still he shouts “Ori? _Ori!”_

His voice echoes off the walls and bounces back to him too soon. Fíli doesn’t open his eyes yet, but he knows without looking that he is in his own little cave, deep in the halls of Mandos. The clash of weapons is still in his ears and he waits for them to fade. He waits for the pain in his chest to ease—but it doesn’t.

Ori is dead.

 _Ori is dead_ , he thinks, and his mind recoils at the thought as he wraps his arms tighter around himself. Ori will never return to his rooms in Erebor and reclaim the grey fingerless gloves that he forgot to pack. He will not be there to comfort his older brothers when it is their turn to pass on—peacefully, in their beds. He will never hug his akrunâtha again, or tell Gimli about his adventures. He will not fall in love properly, with someone who can give him love in return, and have a wedding ceremony with all his family and friends in attendance. He will not have children who curl up in his knitted blankets and beg him for bedtime stories. He will not visit the Shire again, or return to the mountains where he was born and raised. He will never see another spring return to the Lonely Mountain, bringing with it the happy songs of ravens and the warmth of a midday sun and the smell of fresh rain and honeysuckle. He will not curl up in the dusty back shelves of the library, successfully hiding himself from everyone except Fíli while he sits with his book and dreams.

The tears come steadily for a long, long time, and Fíli doesn’t try to fight them. He weeps. He can’t banish thoughts of Ori from his mind, but he is determined to think of him the _right_ way—happy, peaceful, in Erebor and the Blue Mountains. He won’t think of Ori dying with an axe in his hand. He won’t think of his blood rusting the blade of a goblin’s sword. He thinks of him smiling.

 _Maker, keep him in love and remembrance, and joy_.

His knees and his back have grown stiff with discomfort by the time he hears footsteps outside of the mouth to his cave, and the pain in his chest has dulled.

“Fíli?” a gentle voice asks.

“I’m here,” he replies. His voice is hoarse, and Kíli enters the cave.

“You all right, na?” he asks, squatting by Fíli’s side, and Fíli shoots him a waspish look. “Right, wrong question. I understand.”

He reaches out and rubs Fíli’s back in a gentle rocking motion, just like Bala used to do when they were young dwarflings. Fíli is absolutely sure that’s a calculated move, but it helps anyway, and he lets out a deep, shaky breath.

“Is he awake yet?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were going to be there.”

“We decided—well, _I_ decided, and everyone else agreed—that my place was with you. His mother is with him, and Thorin. We asked Balin, but he’s still… well, he’s not ready to greet anyone from Moria yet. And we thought, you know, Ori was so little when his mother died, he might not remember her very well, so it would be a good idea to have someone he knew greet him. Thorin’s the only one who’s not newly arrived.”

“It’s a good idea,” Fíli says, wiping at his eyes. “Has—has he asked for me?”

“Has he asked his _mother_ and _Thorin_ after his makhabbûn? No, he has not.”

Fíli elbows his brother in the ribs, and then clears his throat and stands up.

“I’d like to see him.”

“Thorin was going to take him and his mother to our rooms. Kari’s been on her own all this time, so she doesn’t have much space. Frerin and Li are there as well.”

“Does it have to be the entire family?” Fíli says, annoyed, and Kíli shrugs as they emerge from the cave.

“You know Frerin—he likes to help.”

“He likes to nose about in other people’s business, too.”

“It could be worse,” Kíli chuckles. “Imagine if he had held out for a few more decades or so. You could be having this reunion with Thorin, Kari, Frerin, Li, and Dori and Dwalin, too.”

“Don’t,” Fíli groans, but for a second he almost feels like laughing.

They walk up through the halls and pause just before their shared rooms. The door is shut, but Fíli can hear the quiet murmur of conversation—is that Ori’s voice? His heart is pounding in his chest, and he fiddles with the edge of his shirt nervously. Kíli makes him wait for a moment and rebraids a lock of his hair—and then nods, satisfied, and pushes him towards the door. He walks through to the sitting room and tries to calm himself.

Everyone looks around when he enters, of course, and Fíli is keenly aware of the fact that his eyes must be red and his knees stained with cave-dirt, but he tries not to dwell on it. He tries to focus on nothing except Ori’s face as he sees him, as his brown eyes widen and a small, instinctive smile curves his lips. He feels his heart lighten, all thoughts of pain forgotten, and Ori stands from his chair and—without warning or hesitation—crashes into Fíli. Fíli lets out all of his breath at once and hugs him back, burying his face in Ori’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe it,” he mutters.

“Nor could I—all those times you were _there_ and I didn’t believe—”

“That doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here. Ori, I’m so—”

“If you say you’re sorry, I’m going to kick you,” Ori says, his voice muffled slightly because his face is pressed against Fíli’s neck, and there is a cough from somewhere behind him. “You said you would do it again, wouldn’t you? So would I. And you—you were there.”

“I promised I would be,” Fíli says. His speaks in a low voice and he can feel Ori trembling, and he wishes that they were somewhere private. None of the dwarves in this room have died like Ori did, trapped in one room for days, waiting for death—he knows without being told that that terror must still be lurking in Ori’s mind, and he doesn’t think this will banish it.

“Give us a moment,” he says to the room at large, and without waiting for any response he takes Ori by the elbow and guides him back into the hallway. “What do you need?” he asks gently.

“I’m fine.”

“Ori, come on.”

“I—I don’t know,” Ori mumbles. “I’m mixed up. All of this seems like a dream, but at the same time it _feels_ real. I can’t wrap my head around my mother and Thorin and—and you, but my… my heart, my soul? Already feels it. I’m not making any sense.”

“Yes, you are. I remember when I first arrived, it was hard to adjust. And you, what you’ve been through… it’s all right to rest if you want, you know. Don’t worry about that lot just because they’re busybodies. We’ll make them all go away and you can have a cup of tea and a good meal and a nap.”

Ori smiles in response and reaches up to run his fingers through Fíli’s hair. Fíli feels a bit weak in the knees.

“Thank you. I think—later—that would be nice, but not yet. I haven’t seen my mother since I was a child. I’d like to speak to her for a while.”

“We’ll leave you, then,” Fíli offered, but Ori reached up with his other hand, framing Fíli’s face and holding him gently but firmly where he is.

“Don’t you dare.” For a moment his eyes roam over Fíli’s face and Fíli, oddly enough, feels self-conscious. Usually this is the other way around. His eyes drop, and Ori speaks softly. “Fifty years. Fifty years I haven’t seen you, and still this feels… do you really love me?”

“Yes, dearest. I love you with everything I am.”

"You probably don't even know me that well," Ori mutters, a dry twist at the corner of his lips. "We haven't spoken in so long. We never really spoke much before, either."

"I know you. I've been with you all this time—I've been meant to be with you all this time. I probably know you better than you know yourself."

"I rather doubt that."

“If you had bothered to ask, I could have told you that you were in love with me at least three decades ago," Fili says with a grin. "Probably longer.”

Ori snorts, and without any fanfare he leans closer and drops a kiss onto Fíli’s lips. It takes him off guard—before he can even register what is happening, Ori is pulling away.

“That wouldn’t have shocked me. I was foolish over you for _years_ , Fíli. Back in Ered Luin. Just because you didn’t know doesn’t mean _I_ didn’t.”

“But—but—” Fíli stutters, but then Ori wraps his arms around his neck and kisses him properly, and he forgets what he was going to say, and doesn’t much mind, anyway. He winds his arms around Ori’s waist and marvels at how wonderfully solid he feels, at the soft brush of his lips and the faint bristle of his beard, at the bump of his nose against Fíli’s. Forming coherent thoughts, though, is too difficult until Ori pulls away again, and then he thinks idly that if Kíli comes to check on them and finds them kissing against the door, he’ll never hear the end of it—but then he sees the tenseness in Ori’s shoulders, and is instantly on alert. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Someone was walking over there, and the sound reminded me…”

The dwarven section of the halls does have this as a detraction: they are almost entirely underground. Fíli rubs Ori’s arm soothingly and in the back of his mind, wonders if it’s possible to trade rooms with someone on the upper floors. Most of them have been inhabiting them for centuries.

“Do the tunnels bother you?”

“Not so much like this. They’re so much brighter… we tried to preserve the candles, even though there was no point, in the end…”

Ori looks far away, and Fíli kisses him again, briefly, because he can.

“There are gardens here, you know. Would you like to visit them? We could go right now—we could take some food and everything and go sit in the gardens. Under the open sky.”

“I’d like that,” Ori says with a smile, and he reaches up and strokes Fíli’s hair again. “I can’t believe how easy this is,” he mumbles. “With you. I’m sure at some point it’s going to hit me—everything that’s happened. But right now I… I feel like I can breathe again.”

Fíli hugs Ori tight.

“I wish I could keep it all from you. It’s not going to be as easy as this, but I swear I’ll be here for every moment.”

“Thank you. Zarinruzud,” he adds after a moment’s pause, and Fíli thinks with a smile that it’s the first time he’s heard his name in his one’s voice.

He draws back and kisses Ori’s cheek and tells him, barely whispering, that he loves him, because it’s the only thing that seems to matter now—the feeling that, for the first time in Fíli’s existence, he is exactly where he needs to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kana—amen, lit. so. Amen literally means “let it be so” or “truly,” but I didn’t like the way the literal translations for “let it happen” or “truly” sounded (but thanks to khuzdul4u for helping me!)  
> Azagâl—witness (with a little creative interpretation of the Khuzdul)


End file.
